The Dancing Public

The story of mass ecstatic dances, which erupted uncontrollably across Europe at various times in history, has many forms and many theories about their “ignition.” These frenzied outbreaks of unrelenting dance—filled with spasms, convulsions, and uncontrollable gestures—could spread from one body to another, eventually sweeping up hundreds into a pulsating collective movement that lasted for days or even months. Reappearing from the Middle Ages into the early modern period, these events were explained in countless ways—from possession by evil spirits and saints’ curses to neurological disorders and diagnoses of hysteria. Yet behind the dangerous image of public disorder was the dancing body itself, seeking relief from the stress of epidemics, natural disasters, and poverty—a body in protest.

Mette Ingvartsen, evoking collective moments of past dance mania, explores bodily ecstasy within social gatherings after the pandemic. Her solo, emerging from the isolation of 2020, bursts into an intense mix of unstoppable movements, continuous music, and wild rhythms of words and song. This shapeshifting composition—part dance feast, part spoken poetry concert, part physically exhausting frenzy—raises pressing questions: Can dance seize the collective public body and transform it? What pressures from unexpressed movement do our bodies feel today? Are we ready to be intoxicated by life once again?

…The sky will dance
The moon will dance
The planets will dance
The stars will dance…

Mette Ingvartsen is a Danish choreographer and dancer. She studied in Amsterdam and Brussels, graduating in 2004 from the performing arts school P.A.R.T.S. Her work is characterized by hybridity, exploring the expansion of choreographic methods by combining dance and movement with other fields such as visual arts, technology, language, and theory. In 2003, she founded her own company, and since then her works have been presented across Europe, as well as in the USA, Canada, Australia, and Asia. She has been an artist-in-residence at Kaaitheater in Brussels (2012–2016) and at Volksbühne in Berlin, and she holds a doctorate in choreography from the Stockholm University of the Arts.

In addition to creating performances, writing, and lecturing, Ingvartsen teaches and shares research through workshops with students at universities and art schools. She has collaborated and performed with artists such as Xavier Le Roy, Bojana Cvejic, Jan Ritsema, and Boris Charmatz, and has contributed to collective research projects including the artistic platform EVERYBODYS (2005–2010), for which she co-edited publications, as well as the educational project Six Months, One Location (2008) and the performative conference The Permeable Stage.

In 2024, Mette Ingvartsen received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Danish Arts Foundation.

The Dancing Public is an experiment to be experienced through the body, embodying everything we have missed over the past two years. The performance transforms a historical story into urgent questions for today: would we take to the streets to dance if confinement continued, and could this become a new form of protest in our socially stratified post-pandemic reality? Dance manias were once seen as a threat to public order, as crowds could neither be controlled nor explained. In this sense, the work invites reflection on our relationship with social norms, communal presence, and collective action, challenging audiences to consider who is willing to let themselves be carried away.

— Angela Conquet (The Conversation)

Duration: 70 minutes
No language barrier

Concept & Performance: Mette Ingvartsen
Lighting design: Minna Tiikkainen
Set design: Mette Ingvartsen & Minna Tiikkainen
Musical arrangements: Mette Ingvartsen & Anne van de Star
Costumes: Jennifer Defays
Dramaturgy: Bojana Cvejić
Technical direction: Hans Meijer
Sound Technician: Anne van de Star
Company management: Ruth Collier
Production & administration: Joey Ng
Music: Affkt feat. Sutja Gutierrez, Scanner, Radio Boy, LCC, VII Circle, Kangding Ray, Paula Temple, Ron Morelli, Valanx, Anne van de Star
A production of: Great Investment vzw
Supported by: the Fondation d’entreprise Hermes within the framework of the New Settings Program, Bikubenfonden.

Co-production: PACT Zollverein (Essen), Kaaitheater (Brussels), Festival d’Automne (Paris), Tanzquartier (Vienna), SPRING Performing Arts Festival (Utrecht), Kunstencentrum Vooruit (Ghent), Les Hivernalles (Avignon), Charleroi danse centre choregraphique de Wallonie – Bruxelles, NEXT festival, Dansens Hus Oslo

Residency: Kunstencentrum Buda (Kortrijk)

Funded by: The Flemish Authorities, The Danish Arts Council & The Flemish Community Commission (VGC)