“In Catalonia she is a virtually unknown artist, but in Europe she is a well-established figure in conceptual dance”, explained Àngels Margarit, director of the Mercat de les Flors, about the special guest this weekend and on Thursday and Friday that coming, Mette Ingvartsen. The Danish dancer and choreographer presents on January 28 and 29 and February 2 and 3 four pieces from her repertoire that represent the evolution of her work in search of the limits of the body and dance.
The complexity and depth of Ingvartsen’s choreographic experimentation is the Mercat’s strong bet for its new constellation. Not a single piece is presented, but four functions are dedicated to the creative universe of the Danish woman. The first proposal, Manual Focus, will be presented tomorrow. It is one of the first creations of Ingvartsen’s career, which premiered in 2003, where the choreographer seeks to completely dislodge the body. The bodies of the three interpreters decompose until they become abstract creatures, far from a language that can describe them. In this way, Ingvartsen manages to create a “monstrosity” that questions how the female knot has been viewed and objectified historically.
The second proposal, also from the beginning of the Danish career (2004), is 50/50 and can be seen this Sunday. On this occasion, Ingvartsen presents an investigation into physical expressions and deforms them to voluntarily forced extremes. With this exercise, the artist maintains a latent search for a certain monstrosity in the feminine knot and dismantles the social codifications to feel and express. “With ‘wrong’ bodies, we can search for and experience many more things, outside of social conventions”, explained the artist.
The third part of the constellation will be on Thursday, February 2. On this occasion, the artist will present to come (extended), one of her most recognized works that she began in 2005, but that she took up and expanded in 2017. In this show, the Danish presents a collective choreography with a group of dancers who simulate an orgy. The Modern Bed Designs consists of full-length blue leggings that homogenize all bodies. “I wanted to show the possibility of intimacy outside the role of the conventional couple and also what sex would be like without the dominance hierarchies that dictate the gender roles with which we are raised,” Ingvartsen explained. This show is the happiest part, according to the artist, of a series of shows that talk about the sexual politics of bodies: 69 positions, 7 pleasures and 21 pronographies.
Finally, the constellation dedicated to Ingvarsten will lower the curtain on February 3 with The Dancing Public, a performative solo that eliminates almost all barriers between the artist and the public. The Dane conceives this show as a recreation of the mania for dancing, a collective phenomenon that began to occur during the Middle Ages and for which a clear explanation of why it occurs has never been found. The choreographer became interested in this topic during the pandemic and, with her lack of confinement, she thought that it was the ideal moment to infect people with dance.
“During the performances of The Dancing Public I have to know how to read the atmosphere and the energy of the public and infect them with the desire to dance with me and to be able to create a great collective dance, as happened with the hobbies of the Middle Ages. Each show is different, because each audience is different”, pointed out the dancer. Ingvarsten has especially vindicated this show because she believes that people are emotionally fragile after the pandemic. According to the artist, “dancing can be a collective tool to infect us with the energy to be happy again.”
