METTE INGVARTSEN

50/50 works on extreme and spectacular expressions as a physical practice rather than through psychological motivations. Movements deriving from clearly coded situations, like a rock concert, an opera or a circus number are processed until the obtain a certain kind of deformed expressivity. It looks like affects rather than emotions, except no one knows what affects look like. In spite of manifestos belonging to the past – here comes another one.

Choreography and Performance Mette Ingvartsen / Music Deep Purple, Leoncavallo, Cornelius / Sound Design Peter Lenaerts / Technical direction Hans Meijer / Management company Ruth Collier / Production and administration Joey Ng / Thanks to Podewil (Berlin) P.A.R.T.S (Brussels), Hannah Sophie Hohlfeld, Mårten Spångberg & Bojana Cvejic / Financed by The Flemish Community Commission (VGC)

Manual Focus is turning faces one-80, arms and legs upside down and swapping the front with the backside of the body. Exchanging bodies from animals, disorganized creatures to headless humans and other unnamed categories. Masks of old men on the back head of three nude women transforms them into a 12 legged organism, crossing out their identity by covering their real face with the artificiality of a mask. It isn‘t the monster in itself but rather the monstrous connections between nude/masked, artificial/real, male/female that produces an unfamiliar gaze at the bodies we already know. Monsters are not a species that you can get familiar with, they disappear and slip away unfocused.
Premiered in 2003 at Mousonturm, Frankfurt

Concept Mette Ingvartsen / Created & Performed by Manon Santkin, Kajsa Sandström & Mette Ingvartsen / Replacement Kaya Kołodziejczyk / Technical direction Hans Meijer / Management company Ruth Collier / Production and administration Joey Ng / Produced at P.A.R.T.S. (Brussels), 2003 / Financed by The Flemish Community Commission (VGC) / Thanks to Bojana Cvejić & Peter Lenaerts

Mette Ingvartsen is a Danish choreographer and dancer. She began her training in 1999 in Amsterdam and continued in Brussels, where she graduated from P.A.R.T.S. in 2004. Her choreographic work stands out due to its hybrid character, which fuses dance with other disciplines, especially the visual arts, technology, and language. Between 2009 and 2012, The Artificial Nature Series (comprising the pieces Manual Focus (2003) and 50/50 (2004), developed a series on human/non-human relationships. By contrast, in her latest series, The Red Pieces: 69 positions (2014), 7 Pleasures (2015), to come (expanded) and 21 pornographies (2017), she focuses on nudity, sexuality and how the body has historically been a place of political struggles.

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