Choreomania

Since 2019, students in the BA Program at P.A.R.T.S. have graduated with a piece created in collaboration with a guest artist. For Generation XIV, Mette Ingvartsen—who studied at P.A.R.T.S. herself twenty years ago—embraced the challenge of working with all 40 students on the condition that the process would unfold over the full three years of their studies. 

Together they explore the medieval marvel of dancing epidemics that swept across this part of Europe alongside waves of plague, floods, and famine. These “choreomanias” show a striking response from the most vulnerable or those most afflicted by crisis—dancing with boisterousness and passion, where joy and despair create a peculiar mix of heightened emotion. The explanation for these massive outbursts of dancing remains unknown to this day: a symptom of a deadly disease, poisoning or demonic possession, a cure or an antidote to ward off evil… 

In revisiting these medieval dancing manias, Mette and the dancers from P.A.R.T.S. explore their relevance in our present moment in 2025, shaped by crises and protest. How do you open your body to social contact and contagion? How do affects move through our bodies in waves of imitation and synchronization? What politics emerge in learning to navigate and transform feelings of joy and pain, anxiety and enthusiasm? Together with the remarkable young dancers from P.A.R.T.S., Mette embarked on an inquiry into swarmlike patterns of collectivity and the power of affects to move a crowd like an inextinguishable fire. 

• Mette Ingvartsen (she/her) is a Danish choreographer and dancer who graduated from P.A.R.T.S. in 2004. Manual Focus (2003), her first performance, was created while she was still a student. Her work exhibits great hybridity, in which choreographic practices of dance and movement meet other domains, such as the visual arts, technology, language, and theory. Ingvartsen was an artist in residence at Kaaitheater between 2012 and 2016, and has recently presented performances there, including Skatepark (2023), Rush (2024), and The Dancing Public (2021).   

• P.A.R.T.S. is a school for contemporary dance. The Performing Arts Research and Training Studios (P.A.R.T.S.) offers two programs: P.A.R.T.S. provides an in-depth technical education in the first 'training' cycle. In the advanced 'ateliers' cycle, the focus is entirely on the young maker. The Training and STUDIOS cycles are recognized as Bachelor in Dance (2019) and Master in Dance (2020), respectively.