Dancing Bare ebook
Dancing Bare
by Rigby Taylor
Dancing Bare is an amusing, thoughtful and informative tale about Rigby, an impossibly innocent young man who swaps the suffocating confines of middle class New Zealand for love and liberation in nineteen-sixties London and Europe. Revelling in the freedom conferred by anonymity, he becomes an actor, stripper, rent boy, lover, teacher and dedicated traveller through Europe, North Africa and the Middle East, where travellers were uncommon and countries still retained many of the differences that made travelling so interesting.
Rigby meets with a wide variety of people, life styles and customs, eventually settling in Paris where the state did not consider his sexuality to be a criminal offence.
A moving and amusing story of hope and love, sex and sexuality, theatrical showmanship and artless innocence, laced with a little philosophical speculation as he wanders the world in pursuit of true love.
Review
This book is the story of an independent youth who leaves New Zealand in the nineteen-sixties to go to London, joins a small touring theatre company and embarks on adventurous trips around Britain, Europe, North Africa and the Near East. As the title “Dancing Bare” suggests, his performances are not limited to acting on stage. He enjoys being nude in front of audiences, is happy for them to take pleasure in seeing him naked, and to add to his earnings through “performing” for individuals he likes, mostly men.
Though he has many casual sexual encounters, the writing is not erotic or pornographic. There are no lingering lustful depictions of male anatomy, or thrust by thrust accounts of sexual activity. The hunger for sex and the need to assuage it help to drive the narrative forward, as are the observations about those he engages with, and his disappointments and successes in his acting, teaching, and performing nude.
The autobiography has much more to it than being an account of a libertine seeking pleasure through the swinging sixties and the self-indulgent seventies. As well as being an entertaining and engaging character, Rigby Taylor is very independent. He weighs up the world around him to develop his own outlook and philosophy. Whilst frequently enjoying company, he always remains something of an outsider. Certainly he is sexually liberal, but he does not take drugs or smoke, and rarely drinks alcohol. He takes some extraordinary risks, like crossing borders between hostile countries despite armed soldiers warnings.
The fast pace allows the book to cover many entertaining, amusing, and adventurous episodes, but such a wealth of experience inevitably comes at a cost. He reflects that: “I've always had to keep ‘closing doors’ because the present is as much as I can handle. Life is like hitch-hiking. You're on your own, not sure where you're going or if you'll get there. Everyone else seems to know who they are and where they’re headed as they zip past. Then you get a ride and you too are travelling with purpose, in company... until the car stops and you’re again out in the cold on the roadside, on your own...”
His determination to be true to himself and his own sense of right and wrong enliven his numerous and varied encounters, good and bad. In the final pages. before Rigby Taylor enters middle age, he has developed a desire for a “true friend”, someone with whom he could share common interests as well as a sexual relationship, someone for whom he would, perhaps, not simply be putting on a performance.
A satisfying and rewarding read.
Alan Keslian.
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