Dancer/choreographer April Sellers has made a name for herself as a daring artist who uses nudity to express the human experience. Her new show, "Transcendental Biology," features eight dancers, body paint by Marc DeBauch, and a brightly lit theater setting that ensures an uncommon intimacy between audience and artists. It opens at the Rogue Buddha Gallery today for an eight-night run. MinnPost caught up with Sellers between 12-hour rehearsal days to talk about the body politic and erotic.

MinnPost: Tell me about the term “Transcendental Biology.” What does it mean?

April Sellers: I had done a previous project about vulnerability, and trying to figure out what the most vulnerable part of the body was. I found out it’s the heart. So “Transcendental Biology” for me as a dancer is about not only what we investigate and research on a physical level, but where it takes us in terms of spirituality, imagination  and conceptuality. Asking questions like, `What emotions does the heart carry, or doesn’t? Is it just an organ? And what does the human mind bring to the heart?’

MP: What have you learned about the heart? Do you think emotions truly do move through the heart, like a portal?

AS: I do. I think the biological actions of the body affect us, but we transcend them. So the heart pumping, that regular rhythm, is a constant beat in our life. Probably the only one. But at the same time, it can become sort of background, and you can go somewhere else from there. I was also looking at the heart of an artist, and I started looking at artists who did self-portraits, and the thing that was consistent with all of them was that the artist’s heart had been pierced. Meaning, it has to create. It’s only [full] if it’s creating.

MP: That reminds me of the great Pearl S. Buck quote, “The truly creative mind in any field is no more than this: A human creature born abnormally, inhumanely sensitive. To them a touch is a blow, a sound is a noise, a misfortune is a tragedy, a joy is an ecstasy, a friend is a lover, a lover is a god, and failure is death. Add to this cruelly delicate organism the overpowering necessity to create, create, create -- so that without the creating of music or poetry or books or buildings or something of meaning, their very breath is cut off. They must create, must pour out creation. By some strange, unknown, inward urgency they are not really alive unless they are creating.” It’s a true thing that artists are vulnerable. Many walk around with no epidermis half the time.

 AS: Right. And that heightened sense of [no skin] comes from working with nudity. When I first started working on this piece, the word that kept coming up was “perseverance.” And I started getting really pissed, like, “Oh, you made something. You persevered.” (Laughs sarcastically). But what if you can get beyond that, too? So the transcending part is just getting beyond doing the work or the labor or lack of resources and actually going into imagination.

MP: What led you to this? How much nudity have you done in your work?

AS: Six years.

MP: That’ll be my headline: “Six Years of Nudity.” That’ll get people to the show. Is there nudity in “Transcendental Biology”?

 AS (condescendingly): Uh, yeah. You’re dealing with the body, and biology. There’s a real attention to the visual and making it somewhat fantasy. The other thing is, I’ve spent a lot of time working in nudity, and as a result of that, I felt a lot of pressure to always make sex and eroticism not a part of the work so I could be taken seriously. And I’ve completed divorced that concept.

In six years of my work, I’ve made the body asexual. Then I decided, “bullshit.” As I started working with the idea of biology, I couldn’t help but work with the whole being. So for me, I feel like this time sexuality and eroticism is integrated in the same way the intellect are.

MP: Minneapolis/St. Paul and this area can be very puritanical. Have you found that?

AS: I’m not from here. I grew up in Ohio. I think it’s both a blessing and a curse. There are people who come to my shows because of the nudity, and people who don’t come because of the nudity. So for me, it’s a wash. I’m just making the work. I’ve just got to make the work.

MP: Still, you’ve obviously thought a great deal about the subject of disrobing in public, and people have made comments.

AS: Oh, yeah. Hate mail. I’ve received all kinds of letters in the mail, and email, but I’ve also received poetry in the mail. I have blinders to that. I can’t [hear it]. It does affect me, though. The word that keeps coming back to me is “pierced,” because that kind of thing has affected and made me not use sexuality and eroticism. But nudity has always been a catalyst in modern dance, and the response to it is as wide-ranging as humanity.

"Transcendental Biology." March 20-27. Rogue Buddha Gallery. 8 p.m. to 9 p.m. Tickets $10 at the door. Seating limited to 25; reservations recommended. Details here.