The Dancing Public

What is this extreme need of movement we feel in our bodies today ? Are we ready to taste life to the full again ? After the lonely confinement of the lockdown follows the ultimate ecstacy, according to choreographer Mette Ingvartsen. The Dancing Public  blows up the silence of 2020 with an infernal mix of movement, music, words and songs.

For this solo Ingvartsen goes back to the historical phenomenon of the dance mania. Dance manias were collective outbursts of continuous dancing, moving uncontrollably, shaking and convulsing bodies. They started from one body and spread to hundreds of bodies that pulsated as one mass sometimes for months. From the Middle Ages to modern time this phenomenon emerged regularly and lots of explanations were given for it : from possession by evil spirits to damnations by saints and neurological troubles. But behind the image of public disturbance first and foremost is a body that got rid of the stress of epidemics, natural disasters and poverty, a body that danced out of protest.

The Dancing Public puts that body at the centre again. Ingvartsen examines the urge to move that we feel at social gatherings in the aftermath of the pandemic. This is a dance festival, a spoken word concert and an utterance of physical madness until exhaustion.

The Danish Mette Ingvartsen studied at the Amsterdam Hogeschool voor de Kunsten and P.A.R.T.S. before she obtained a Master's degree in choreography in Sweden. In her work she pays attention to intimate, naked but non-human performers as well. Her 21 Pornographies (2018) was selected for Het TheaterFestival. Moving in Concert was to be seen at NEXT 2019.

COPRODUCTION
Show in corealisation with le Théâtre de l’Oiseau-Mouche