Throwback to the X-week ‘Dancing Mania’ guided by Mette Igvartsen

The first year bachelor Training students concluded 2022 with an intensive one-week -workshop: ‘Dancing Mania’ guided by Mette Ingvartsen.
This workshop is the first step toward the performance "Choreomania”, a performance the students will create under the direction of Mette Ingvartsen, resulting in public showings in their third and final year.

In this first workshop, dancer & choreographer Mette Ingvartsen shares her interest in dance as a social phenomenon and practice.

“ I have always been fascinated with social dances and how they relate to very basic human needs for movement, enjoyment and ecstasy. But perhaps more importantly, how social dances are often also connected to social and political situations and conditions, making them into dances of resistance, modes of warding off hardship, or even strategies of survival.”

Students have been researching “dancing manias”, a topic Mette has been exploring in her work for a couple of years and particularly in the solo “ The dancing Public”. Movement research materials that Mette gathered on this topic were used, to see how they collectively can work on them in a large group. Different texts, videos and images in reference to historical and contemporary dancing manias and dancing marathons served as an inspiration to both physically and mentally engage in the work.

Pictures by Tine Declerck - Published 12/01/2023