The Dancing Public

Tonight, is for dancing
Tonight, we’ll be dancing…

In The Dancing Public, Mette Ingvartsen explores ecstatic movement at social gatherings in the aftermath of a pandemic. Her solo blows up the solitary confinement of 2020 with a mix of unstoppable movements, incessant music, words and chants in infernal tempos and rhythms. The Dancing Public is a dance party, a spoken word concert and an expression of physical madness to the point of exhaustion. What is this extreme need for movement that we feel in our bodies today? Are we ready to taste life to the full again?

In her latest solo, Mette Ingvartsen brings the historical phenomenon of dancing mania to life on stage. Dance mania was a collective ecstatic outburst of relentless dancing, uncontrollable movement, bodily jerks and convulsions. It could start from one body and spread to several hundred, pulsating as one mass for days or months. From the Middle Ages to modern times, this phenomenon has been a regular occurrence and was given numerous explanations: from possession by evil spirits over curses by saints to neurological malfunctions. But behind the dangerous image of public disorder, there was above all a body that freed itself from the stress of epidemics, natural disasters and poverty, a body that danced in protest.

• Danish dancer and choreographer Mette Ingvartsen graduated from PARTS in 2004, and was artist-in-residence at Kaaitheater for the period 2013-2016. She made several thematic cycles, for instance on ecology (The Artificial Nature Project) and sexuality (The Red Pieces). With The Dancing Public, she is back on stage.