Interview with Mette Ingvartsen

For Delirious Night, you mention the dancing manias of the Middle Ages and “Le Bal des Folles”. Are these historical references visible on stage, or do they simply serve as a foundation for a reflection on collective dance? 

With Delirious Night I’m trying to understand what living in times of crisis does to our bodies, and how collective dancing can be a way of responding kinesthetically to a challenging present. It is choreography based on nighttime atmospheres, and on how our affects and emotions are not entirely our own, but also something contagious that shapes us collectively. During the creation we’ve drawn inspiration from the dancing manias of the Middle Ages, also known as St. Vitus’ dances, because they illustrate how bodies historically have reacted to different threats. During these dancing manias people started moving unstoppably in public spaces and became swept up in temporary forms of collective madness. Some historians see these endless dances as a response to the hardships of a time devastated by plague, floods, and famine, while others think they were caused by demonic possessions. Le bal des folles at La Salpêtrière in Paris in the 1880s emerged as another reference because Dr. Charcot explicitly connected the hysterical fits of his often female patients to the dancing manias of the Middle Ages in one of his publications. These gatherings allowed hysteric patients to have a ball, while the Parisian bourgeoisie was invited to socialize with them — not unlike how they were also put on display for the medical authorities during Charcot’s lectures. I found these attempts to repress the rebellious impulses of 19th-century women both deeply troubling and fascinating.

How do you connect these dance-related events to the contemporary concerns of our post-pandemic societies?

I look at the era we live in today, with crises surrounding us no matter where we turn. I observe and work with how my own body reacts, but also how we more collectively handle, from an emotional point of view, the overwhelming experience of living in a society filled with threats: environmental destruction, looming fascism, wars and abuses of power, or the risk of a nervous breakdown due to exhaustion following a global pandemic. That said, this is a performance that also aims to create a joyful, even festive space, where we can try to find a way to work through these tensions through excessive dance.

The show is structured as a giant dance-as-celebration that explores the limits of a collective trance. What shape does this dance take in terms of movement and space?

The performance is built around social activities one might imagine taking place during a night of celebration. Dance, drumming, clapping, and singing are its fundamental components, combined with the idea of a contagious and unstoppable dance that leads to a state of madness. From the start of the process, I was interested in exploring the concept of trance, using masks, which can help induce heightened states or situations of altered perception. I think of the performance as something between a social celebration, a concert, and a masked ball spiraling out of control, a form of chaotic energy generated by the performers and the music of Will Guthrie.

Both public space and the night are inherently linked to celebration. 

In the Middle Ages, theatre was performed in public squares, often on wagons that could be easily moved from one town to the next. With lighting and set designer Minna Tiikkainen, we thought about what such a stage might look like today. We drew inspiration from free parties and the materials used to build these festive spaces in a field or a forest. We also thought about concerts and village festivals. Based on this contemporary iconography, we built platforms from scaffolds, and hung coloured light bulbs above the performance space. In a concert-style manner, Will Guthrie’s music also explores how states of nighttime trance can be induced through chaotic rhythms, long duration and excess. For the masks and costumes, we read various accounts of dancing manias and started from there, but also from masked balls, carnivals, or parades as more explicit forms of celebration. With Jenny Defays we decided on using devil and death masks in reference to the belief that these dances were caused by demonic possession, or that people sometimes danced themselves to death during the manias. We also use animal masks inspired by a story of how nuns, in 1491, began behaving like cats, dogs, and birds within their cloister. But the masks also hold a different meaning today. They relate to strategies for avoiding surveillance, offering a way to move unseen in a world of constant facial recognition. They also have a strong presence in urban culture, used by musicians and performers to shift attention away from their individual identity or away from the tyranny of self-presentation demanded on social media platforms. Masks are also used during protests where people shield themselves for protection and anonymity.

What meaning do you give to the night?

For me dance has always been both an artistic and a daily lived social practice. I used to dance the night away, and still do when ever I get the chance, but I have never considered this as only a form of enjoyment. To me the night was always filled with both positive and negative feelings, and a space where personal but also social tensions would come to the surface. During my research into different forms of social dancing I found a connection to this in tarantism—another example of dancing mania—in which dance is both a poison and cure. According to Italian legend, people bitten by venomous spiders had to dance to rid themselves of the poison. This double bind between dance being both a poison and a cure, connects social dancing to how people enact and experience different struggles against repression. In the Middle Ages, women, children, the poot and sick and the religious outcasts were dancing themselves against the social order of the day.  This history reminds us that social dance is much more complex than just being an outlet for emotion or a consumerist form of escapism – which techno or rave parties in their commercial form provide. In Delirious night, I am interested in something other than that: I want to use the special capacity of dance on a theater stage to re-examine the urge for collective corporeal unrest and joy, but also to possibly stir a kinaesthetic response in the audience, be it excitation or numbness, to an excessive dance.   

Moïra Dalant, February 2025