
Dancing as a moment of collective ecstasy
Danish choreographer Mette Ingvartsen brings the solo The Dancing Public to the Mercat de les Flors.
As part of the "Constellation Mette Ingvartsen" programme, on 5 February the Mercat de les Flors will host a solo performance by the Danish choreographer and dancer entitled The Dancing Public. It is a proposal that is linked to what has happened in recent years with the pandemic and the confinement it entailed, and the subsequent outburst of joy at being able to return to normal life, in Ingvartsen's case expressed with frenetic dances.
The solo is based on a big question: are we ready to feel happy with life again? In the show, the audience witnesses a burst of movement from the dancer, a physical frenzy to the point of exhaustion, following the incessant music, with no lack of words or chanting. "Mette Ingvartsen evokes collective moments from the dance manias of the past when she explores the ecstasy of movement in a social gathering after a pandemic", reads the synopsis describing the Danish dancer's project. A synopsis, and a performance, that also interrogates us with other questions: Can a dance abduct and reorganise the social corpus of the public? and What need for excess and movement does our body have today?
Ingvartsen's work fuses dance with other disciplines, especially visual arts, technology and language. She has created different series of choreographies; between 2009 and 2012 she developed a cycle on human/non-human relations, while from 2014 to 2017 her proposals focused on nudity, sexuality and how the body has historically been a site of political struggles.
More information and tickets at this link.