The Dancing Public

In The Dancing Public, Mette Ingvartsen explores ecstatic movement within social gatherings. Electronic music and vocal arrangements draw the audience not only to watch but to feel the beat in their bodies as she dances unstoppably across three stages. Calling back to choreomanias or dance ‘crazes’ from the past, Ingvartsen’s voice fills the space with stories, rapid-fire verbal rhythms, songs and ecstatic shouts.
She moves through the audience as though dancing in a public square, or diving into the delirious night of an endless rave. As she dances, her chants recall episodes of unexplained mass dance from medieval times to the present day – moments when people danced till they ped, feet covered in blood and minds shrouded by fog.

Between evil possessions, uncontrollable gestures and hysteric outbursts, a joyful spirit bursts through her body and urges us to dance. Calling on the collective power of being together, this dance feast, spoken-word concert or frenzy of unbounded movement oscillates between exhaustion and celebration.

... The sky will be dancing

The moon will be dancing

The planets will be dancing

The stars will be dancing ...
 

 

Mette Ingvartsen is a Danish choreographer and dancer. From 1999 she studied in Amsterdam and Brussels where she in 2004 graduated from the performing arts school P.A.R.T.S. Her first performance “Manual Focus” (2003) was made while she was still studying. Her early pieces comprise among others of 50/50 (2004), to come (2005), It’s in The Air (2008) and GIANT CITY (2009) - performances questioning affect, perception and sensation in relation to bodily representation. Her work is characterized by hybridity and engages in extending choreographic practices by combining dance and movement with other domains such as visual art, technology, language and theory.

An important strand of her work was developed between 2009 and 2012 with The Artificial Nature Series, where she focused on reconfiguring relations between human and non-human agency through choreography. The series includes three performances devoid of human presence: evaporated landscapes (2009), The Extra Sensorial Garden (2011) The Light Forest (2010) and two in which the human figure was reintroduced: Speculations (2011) and the group work The Artificial Nature Project (2012).

By contrast her latest series, The Red Pieces: 69 positions (2014) 7 Pleasures (2015), to come (extended) and 21 pornographies (2017) inscribes itself into a history of human performance with a focus on nudity, sexuality and how the body historically has been a site for political struggles.

In 2019, she premiered Moving in Concert, an abstract group choreography, that focuses on the interlacing between humans, technological tools and natural materials.

In 2021 Mette Ingvartsen premieres two new projects: The Life Work, an in situ project with elderly people in the Ruhr region in Germany which addresses migration issues. And a new solo, The Dancing Public, inspired by a fascination for dancing manias throughout history. Ingvartsen established her company in 2003 and her work has since then been shown throughout Europe, as well as in the U.S, Canada, Australia and Asia. She has been artist-in-residence at Kaaitheater in Brussels (2012-2016), Volksbühne in Berlin, and associated to the APAP network.