Last weekend we went to see the exhibition Bodies at South Street Seaport, a collection of dancing, jumping, running cadavers, stripped of their skin the better to let us look at their inner workings. It was just the thing for a holiday Sunday: My wife was feeling a little low, and in need of an out-of-body experience of some sort, and our daughter (who seems wedded to her cell phone and computer these days) likes anythng gross and anatomical.

The show, which has generated some controversy, was less shocking than I had expected: maybe it was all those years of looking at my big brother’s Visible Man model as a kid but most of the bones and guts looked rather familiar to me — all though I had never seen the inner workings so animated! My favorite display featured a man’s skeleton dancing with his muscular system, a tango they both used to know so well.

The circulatory system, freed of its muscles, organs, and skeleton, looked like coral: red and spindly, as delicate as the etchings on a sand dollar. The diseased lungs and hearts of former smokers and heart disease victims got a lot of attention, too. The crowds were in some ways the best thing about the show. A lot of folks you won’t find at the MOMA were staring intently at the complex maze of material that exists beneath our skin with faces at once repulsed and relieved: Their expressions seem to say, oh, yes, I recognize you. Imagine seeing you here.

Me, I had spent a little too much time carving a 24-lb bird a few days before to really enjoy the splayed muscles separating from the bones of the bouncing cadavers. It sure didn’t make me hungry which was probably a relief to family and friends alike.