Ballet of uncertainties
Actually, the title already gave it away: Mette Ingvartsen’s The Dancing Public does not grant the audience a safe distance – no rows of seats, no seating, no fourth wall being broken in a playful manner. The audience itself becomes the performance space, the crowd becomes the public to which Ingvartsen refers and its activation is an integral part of the performance experience.
The stage set resembles a club: a black room illuminated by a few vertically mounted fluorescent tubes. To a monotonous beat, Ingvartsen mingles with the audience and encourages them to dance, like a holiday entertainer on a cruise ship.
The Dancing Public is about ‘dancing mania’, the historical phenomenon of collective ‘ecstatic outbursts of relentless dancing, bodily jerks and convulsions, and uncontrollable gestures’, according to the accompanying text. Ingvartsen’s spoken-word performance recreates various historical examples and tries to link them to the present.
The plague, floods, hunger, infanticide caused this dancing mania, which Ingvartsen now seems to want to apply to the current social situation of Covid measures. A comparison that is misleading in more ways than one, however; because neither do the physical and psychological traumas described – and at times grotesquely and irritatingly performed – correspond to a liberating catharsis, nor are we living in the ‘post-pandemic society’ conjured up by the text just yet.
They’re going to take it off – the mask
A look into the audience reveals that the verse, being recited mantra-like, is not regarded as a moment of liberation by all to an equal degree. Many of them are wearing a mask, the uncertainty in this ‘club’ setting is palpable. On the one hand, these are the uncertainties that can be observed on any dance floor: while some really let themselves be carried away and dance exuberantly, many people only move their feet a little while others tend to stand about hesitantly at the edge or sit down on the floor.
On the other hand, I think I can feel how unusual the club setting still is for many people: How close is too close? This in turn makes me wonder about the vulnerable groups for whose benefit the mask is still recommended. Precisely those people who Ingvartsen mentions in her performance in the historical context, but whose convulsions, despair and self-injuries she seems to turn into careless dance gestures. Her supposed cry of relief feels out of place and premature despite the rules on mandatory face masks having been considerably relaxed.
Emotional relief / a sea of bodies becoming a mass dance
It remains unclear how the ‘dancing mania’ is supposed to function as a disease and a symptom, as a reaction and a coping strategy, as a means of emotional healing, of detachment and catharsis – all at the same time. In their entirety, these contradictory dimensions act as a trivialisation of an often deadly phenomenon, which is being reinterpreted as a party event.
Inevitably, I ask myself questions such as: Is the audience’s reticence intended as part of the concept? A calculated uncertainty that manifests itself in their movements – or lack thereof? Does Ingvartsen skillfully prompt the spectators to self-reflect or does she in fact intend them to get carried away unconcernedly, in imitation of her ‘leader’ figure, who at times stages herself as messianic?
Crawling through the crowd on all fours, she barks like a dog, then again – immersed in a brilliantly bright light – she throws herself crucifixion-style on top of one of the fluorescent tubes high up on a platform. The beat drops, the strobe flashes. As much as I long for us to have already reached this moment of breathing a sigh of relief and letting go after more than two years of the pandemic, the celebration of the historical ‘dancing mania’, which often led to collapse and death due to exhaustion, seems almost too absurd to serve as a liberating reaction to Covid-19. Is ill health really a party?
Kathrin Heinrich is an art historian and a critic. She is a doctoral student and research associate for the research project ‘Addressing Amnesia, Performing Trauma’ at the University of Applied Arts Vienna. Publications including in Der Standard, Springerin, Süddeutsche Zeitung, Art Basel Stories, Eikon, PW-Magazine and Arts of the Working Class, as well as essays for Kunsthalle Wien, Salzburg Museum and Künstlerhaus Wien.