Mette Ingvartsen is a Danish dancer, choreographer and performance artist who has been active since the early 2000s.

Training

Mette Ingvartsen came into contact with the dance world at a very young age; she was a member of the Junior Company led by the Swedish choreographer Marie Brolin Tani in

Aarhus Aarhus (, , ; officially spelled Århus from 1948 until 1 January 2011) is the second-largest city in Denmark and the seat of Aarhus municipality, Aarhus Municipality. It is located on the eastern shore of Jutland in the Kattegat sea and app ...

, Denmark. Since 1999, she subsequently studied in

Amsterdam Amsterdam ( , ; ; ) is the capital of the Netherlands, capital and Municipalities of the Netherlands, largest city of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. It has a population of 933,680 in June 2024 within the city proper, 1,457,018 in the City Re ...

and

Brussels Brussels, officially the Brussels-Capital Region, (All text and all but one graphic show the English name as Brussels-Capital Region.) is a Communities, regions and language areas of Belgium#Regions, region of Belgium comprising #Municipalit ...

, where she graduated in 2004 from the dance school P.A.R.T.S., which was founded by choreographer

Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker Anne Teresa, Baroness De Keersmaeker (, born 1960 in Mechelen, Belgium, grew up in Wemmel) is a contemporary dance choreographer. The dance company constructed around her, , was in residence at La Monnaie in Brussels from 1992 to 2007. Biogra ...

. Afterwards she obtained a PhD in choreography at UNIARTS / Lund University in Sweden. Its subject was the relationship between an artist's theoretical work and their artistic practice.

Work as a choreographer

Since 2002 Mette Ingvartsen has worked in Brussels on an oeuvre of choreographies, performances and 'living installations' that are both conceptual and very physical. Her artistic work never sets apart from research and theoretical concepts. She created her first performance, ''Manual Focus'' (2003), while still studying. After that she initiated various research projects and created a wide range of performances, including ''50/50'' (2004), ''to come'' (2005), ''Why We Love Action'' (2007), ''It’S In The Air'' (2008), ''Giant City'' (2009) and ''All the way out there...'' (2011). Questions about kinesthesia, perception, affect and sensation are central. Although she studied for four years at P.A.R.T.S., a dance school known for a highly physical education, Mette Ingvartsen started to consider choreographing as a practice that not only relates to the physical body of the dancer but also to different types non-human performers and animated materials. She even takes away the dancer's body from the scene, and she shifts the hierarchy between the body and the objects in dance. That started with the production ''Evaporated landscapes'' (2009), a choreography / performance for foam, fog, light and sound instead of (dancing) bodies.

The Artificial Nature Series

This interest in expansion has resulted in a series of projects that extend choreography to non-human materials. Together they form ''The Artificial Nature Series'', a series of five productions that were created between 2009 and 2012. ''The Extra Sensorial Garden'' (2010) was presented in

Copenhagen Copenhagen ( ) is the capital and most populous city of Denmark, with a population of 1.4 million in the Urban area of Copenhagen, urban area. The city is situated on the islands of Zealand and Amager, separated from Malmö, Sweden, by the ...

and ''The Light Forest'' (2010) could be visited during Szene

Salzburg Salzburg is the List of cities and towns in Austria, fourth-largest city in Austria. In 2020 its population was 156,852. The city lies on the Salzach, Salzach River, near the border with Germany and at the foot of the Austrian Alps, Alps moun ...

in July 2010 and 2011. In ''Speculations'' (2011), the spectator experienced a storytelling session. ''The Artificial Nature Project'' (2012) closed the series and reintroduced the human performer into a network of connections between human and non-human actors.

The Red Pieces

Following this series of productions that focused on animated, non-human materials, a return to the human body prompted. This resulted in a new series of productions in which the body, sexuality, nudity, privacy and the way in which they are connected to the public atmosphere are central. Sexuality and the naked body became a means to exploring participation and the collective. In 2014, Mette Ingvartsen, began working on a new cycle titled ''The Red Pieces''. ''69 positions'' (2014) opened that series and questioned the boundaries between private and public space by literally placing the naked body between the theater audience. In the second production, ''7 pleasures'' (2015), she examines seven concepts of pleasure. Twelve performers give shape to sensory sensations. In a long sensual movement, bodies touch each other, lose their limits, vibrate and form unexpected compositions and constellations with things around them. The third production is ''to come (extended)'' (2017). It is based on ''to come'' (2005), a former work by Mette Ingvartsen for five dancers. The reason for revisiting this choreography with fifteen instead of five dancers in Ingvartsen's desire to refract the current politics of sex through the joyful tone of the production from 2005. The series ''The Red Pieces'' also includes ''21 pornographies'' (2017) and ''The Permeable Stage'' (2016). The first one is a production that has the presence of pornography in many parts of society as a starting point and explores the operations of the pornographic through a collection of erotic and affective materials. The second one is a meeting of artists and theorists that is focussed on the way in which sexuality is present everywhere, how it transcends the human body, and can be found in the relationships with objects, instruments, environments and media technologies.

Collaborations

From 2013 to 2016, Mette Ingvartsen was artist-in-residence at the Brussels Kaaitheater, which has been showing her work since 2004. From 2010 to 2015 she was connected to the network apap - advancing performing arts project. In the period from 2017 to 2022, she is a member of the artistic team led by

Chris Dercon Chris Dercon (born 1958), is a Belgian art historian, curator, and museum director. Dercon has worked and published extensively on the future of museums, working with architects Rem Koolhaas, Robbrecht en Daem, Herzog and De Meuron, Gunther V ...

at the

Volksbühne The Volksbühne ("People's Theatre") is a theater in Berlin. Located in Berlin's city center Mitte on Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz (Rosa Luxemburg Square) in what was the GDR's capital. It has been called Berlin's most iconic theatre. About The V ...

in Berlin. In addition to the creation and performance of her own work, Mette Ingvartsen participated as a performer in projects by Jan Ritsema / Bojana Cvejic,

Xavier Le Roy Xavier Le Roy is a French-German artist known for his work in contemporary dance and choreography. He was born 1963 in Juvisy-sur-Orge, France. Education Xavier Le Roy holds a doctorate in molecular biology from the University of Montpellier i ...

and Boris Charmatz.

Work as a teacher

In addition to her performances, Mette Ingvartsen is researching, writing and documenting artistic work. She teaches classes and workshops on developing methodologies of choreographic practices. Since 2005, she is working on ''everybodys'', an open and collaborative project based on the principle of

open source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use and view the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open source model is a decentrali ...

. The project aims to produce tools and techniques which can be used by artists in the creation of their work. In 2017, Mette Ingvartsen is ''Valeska Gert Visiting Professor'' at

Freie Universität Berlin The Free University of Berlin (, often abbreviated as FU Berlin or simply FU) is a public university, public research university in Berlin, Germany. It was founded in West Berlin in 1948 with American support during the early Cold War period a ...

. During one semester, she is working with students on the ''Viscous Environments Project'', which deals with how a so-called 'durational environment', a mix of an installation and a long-term performance, can be created using human bodies and not-human performers.

Work as an editor, researcher and curator

She also works as an editor for the everybodys publications. In 2008, she participated in ''6Months1Location'', a project by Xavier Le Roy and Bojana Cvejic on questions about education, production structures and artistic exchange. In the 6-month YouTube project ''Where's My Privacy'', she tried to rethink choreographic production through today's communication tools. As an extension of 6M1L, she co-organized the festival ''In-presentable 09'' in Madrid, at the invitation of Juan Dominguez. On the occasion of the restaging ''69 Positions'' and ''7 pleasures'' at the Kaaitheater, Mette Ingvartsen organized ''The Permeable Stage'', a performative conference on the politics of sexuality in relation to the public and private sphere.

Productions

Own productions: * ''Solo negatives'' (Mette Ingvartsen, 2002) * ''Manual Focus'' (Mette Ingvartsen, 2003) * ''Out Of Order'' (Mette Ingvartsen, 2004) * ''50/50'' (Mette Ingvartsen, 2004) * ''To come'' (Mette Ingvartsen, 2005) * ''Why We Love Action'' (Mette Ingvartsen / Great Investment, 2007) * ''It's In The Air'' (Mette Ingvartsen / Great Investment in collaboration with Jefta van Dinther / Sure Basic, 2008) * ''Giant City'' (Mette Ingvartsen / Great Investment, 2009) * ''Evaporated landscapes'' (Mette Ingvartsen / Great Investment, 2009) * ''The Extra Sensorial Garden'' (Mette Ingvartsen / Great Investment, 2010) * ''The Light Forest '' (Mette Ingvartsen / szene Salzburg, 2010) * ''All the way out there... '' (Mette Ingvartsen / Great Investment in collaboration with Guillem Mont de Palol, 2011) * ''Speculations'' (Mette Ingvartsen / Great Investment, 2011) * ''The Artificial Nature Project'' (Mette Ingvartsen / Great Investment, 2012) * ''69 positions'' (Mette Ingvartsen / Great Investment, 2014) * ''7 pleasures'' (Mette Ingvartsen / Great Investment, 2015) * ''To come (extended)'' (Mette Ingvartsen / Great Investment, 2017) * ''21 pornographies'' (Mette Ingvartsen / Great Investment, 2017) * ''All Around'' (Mette Ingvartsen / Great Investment, 2019) * ''Moving in Concert'' (Mette Ingvartsen / Great Investment, 2019) Productions by others: * ''KnowH2Ow'' (Jan Ritsema, Bojana Cvejic, Mette Ingvartsen and Sandy Williams, 2006) * ''Quintette Cercle'' (Boris Charmatz, 2006) * '' Low pieces'' (Xavier Le Roy, 2009–2011)Page about ''Low pieces'' (Xavier Le Roy, 2009- 2011)
on the website of Xavier Le Roy

References

Sources

Website of Mette Ingvartsen

Vimeo channel of Mette Ingvartsen