Let's Talk About Sex: The Shows Busting The Oldest Taboos At Melbourne Festival

While we repair this glitch in Australia's humanity when anyone's sex life and sexuality are apparently open to public opinions and surveys, two shows at the Melbourne Festival appear — at first glance at least — to use sex to make their audiences feel uncomfortable.

This discomfort promises to be brief. In fact, these productions are about engaging the complexities of pleasure, feeling at ease in our own skins, and remembering that sex and sexuality can always be part of our paths to joy.

Twelve young fit naked bodies intertwine in the only publicity image for 7 Pleasures by Danish choreographer Mette Ingvartsen. It's a sexy photo, where the performers seem happy and comfortable being naked together. By contrast, the photo for All The Sex I've Ever Had by Canadian-German company Mammalian Diving Reflex is the wrinkled face of a woman, maybe in her 80s. Is the thought of her being naked and writhing with other naked bodies a bit too squicky to even imagine?

The director of All The Sex I've Ever Had is Darren O'Donnell, who knows that audiences might approach a performance "thinking it's disgusting" to hear people over 65 years old talk about sex - "but they'll get over that". A lot of his work is about getting over ingrained beliefs and perceptions.

O'Donnell, who founded the company in 1993, is 52 - "you can tell them that". I'm 49 and we both laugh because younger people already think we "don't get any action". He explains how the performance uses this kind of discomfort - the idea older people aren't sexual - as a way to increase social intelligence and engagement. It's like using weights to build physical strength or figuring out puzzles to build intelligence. He uses other people to create discomfort and "when you get used to the other people, your social intelligence starts to rise". 

At last year's Melbourne Festival, Mammalian Diving Reflex questioned our trust and the abilities of younger people with the aptly named Haircuts by Children (with a similar theme to the Children's Choice Awards they brought in 2008). I was far too sensible (cough, uncomfortable) to book an appointment, but I regretted that choice almost as soon as I began watching people getting their new look and talking with their young hairdressers. I still wish I'd done it.

All The Sex I Ever Had develops comfort by its six performers telling the stories of their lives. This festival production, whose Melbourne cast first met with the company three weeks before the performance, will be the thirteenth of the work since it premiered in 2010. The 2016 Sydney Festival cast are travelling to Melbourne to see this production together.

Each script is developed from four-hour long interviews that take each performer through every year of their life that they can remember. O'Donnell says that each cast begins thinking that "'there's nothing interesting about my life'", but they leave with "the understanding that not only is their life quite interesting but it's interesting to a whole room of people who will approach them afterwards and treat them like rock stars".

7 Pleasures initially is arguably less personal, even though it's visually explicit and uses images and ideas of sexualised bodies that are more socially acceptable because they are young, able, slim and fit. It premiered in 2015 in Graz, Austria, and is the second part of a cycle of work where Ingvartsen explores the relationship between sexuality and the public sphere. She uses naked dancers to "problematise" reactions to the work.

The initial discomfort comes from personal responses to the naked bodies on the stage. Ingvartsen knows her work generates "pleasure, excitement, and frustration", but by exploring desire — especially sexual desire —  ­she asks if that yearning is something that's really personal or if it's something created externally by our society.

7 Pleasures asks how our responses to seeing naked bodies in public is different to how we'd respond to them in private? Do we react differently when a body is presented on a stage as art? And is our public response authentic or something we've learned from experiencing thousands of public responses to naked bodies? By confronting our own response, Ingvartsen hopes her audiences are able to see naked bodies from a new perspective and use the "joyful potential" of her exploration of pleasure to "disrupt cliched images attached to nudity and sexuality". 

As we drop the idea of what a sexual body is meant to look and act like, perhaps we can be more open to the joy of being sexual? As when we remember that older people are vital and sexually alert, perhaps we can look forward to discovering joy for a longer time than we might assume? But are these shows really about sex? O'Donnell doesn't hesitate to answer: "It's not about sex at all. It's about all the things that spin off of that; sex - sexuality and romance - is just a sort of metronome that's a constant in our lives but it produces so much other drama."

He reminds us that older people have learned to "sweat the small stuff last" and hopes that it's a revelation for audiences to see, or remember, that they can survive their "stupid love life". As 7 Pleasures hopes to affirm that naked bodies are not the beginning or end of pleasure, All The Sex I Ever Had generously shares the joys that come from finally being comfortable in your own skin.

Melbourne Festival presents All The Sex I've Ever Had, 12 - 15 Oct at Arts Centre Melbourne, and 7 Pleasures, 18 - 22 Oct, Arts Centre Melbourne.