Pornography and the war within us

What happens if our desires are not confined or oppressed?Choreographer Mette Ingvartsen dances the fine line between sex and art. But hers is not a show for the squeamish.

Choreographer and dancer Mette Ingvartsen. Picture: Bea Borgers

For the past eight years, Danish dancer and choreographer Mette Ingvartsen has placed the politics of pleasure, the darker side of sexuality and the inner-workings of the body at the centre of her performances.

“Where I’m from in Central Europe, nudity and the kind of questions I’m asking are fully accepted and not something I’ve ever encountered problems with,” Ingvartsen says. “But, of course, that’s not the case in other places in the world.”

Aarhus-born Ingvartsen, 42, has been dancing since she was eight and studied contemporary dance at P.A.R.T.S (Performing Arts Research and Training Studios) in Brussels. Today her solo and group works are performed in theatres across the world, including in Australia where next month two of her solo pieces – The Dancing Public and 21 Pornographies – will show as part of Melbourne’s Rising festival.

In creating 21 Pornographies, Ingvartsen drew inspiration from the erotica of the notorious French philosopher Marquis de Sade, the liberation and eventual commercialisation of the pornographic image in Denmark during the 1970s and images from inside the Abu Ghraib prison.

“These are images that I don’t like to look at,” says Ingvartsen, referring to footage of American soldiers torturing naked prisoners. “I’d rather look away. But, it’s about the mechanisms of how we look at the naked sexualised body and how sometimes it’s very troubling or disturbing, and at other times exciting … which all has to do with how sexual images affect us.”

As the title suggests, Ingvartsen uses her body to engage with the topic of porn; she arrives on stage fully clothed and undresses while reciting and acting out scenes inspired by pornography and the carnal brutalities of war. Since 21 Pornographies premiered in 2017, Ingvartsen has found it easier with each performance to prepare herself for the physical display demanded by the work. She has found a way to enable her body to see what would happen, she says, “if our desires are not confined or oppressed”.

This authentic and raw performance is not for the squeamish. In one scene Ingvartsen wipes her own urine on her face – “the piece brought me to that,” she says. In a review for The Scotsman Joyce McMillan wrote: “Ingvartsen’s show is extreme, and not for the faint-hearted; but her brilliance blazes, on a dark stage lit only by harsh strips of fluorescence, leaving everyone who has followed her journey shocked, enthralled, and breathless with admiration.”

21 Pornographies forms part of a growing series of performances called The Red Pieces, in which Ingvartsen breaks down the sociopolitical implications of intimacy and sex.

Her first work in the series, titled 69 positions (2014), delves in to the canon of 1960s performance art and features re-enactments of works by American experimental artist Carolee Schneemann and Japanese contemporary artist Yayoi Kusama.

Then, in 2015, Ingvartsen premiered 7 Pleasures, featuring 12 naked performers gyrating in unison on stage, before creating 2017’s To Come (Extended) in which 15 participants simulate an orgy.

In one scene Ingvartsen, wipes her own urine on her face

Her latest piece, a departure from the series, is called Dancing Public and draws on the feelings Ingvartsen experienced during the Covid-19 lockdowns.

“While I was working on the piece it became very much about the kind of energy that gets stored up in the body when you’re not allowed to move,” Ingvartsen says. “During the long Covid lockdowns in Europe many restrictions were placed on the body and partying was the first thing that was forbidden.”

Ingvartsen says she is interested in the moments in which “dance comes out of need” or is born out of a crisis. She cites the organised dance marathons that took place in the US in the 1930s during the Great Depression. Men and women would sign up to dance in competitions – reportedly even to the point of death, in the case of one man who danced for 87 hours – for the chance to take home prize money.

Ingvartsen glances even further back to the 16th-century tales of “dancing mania”, which supposedly can be traced to a so-called dancing plague that took place on Christmas Eve in 1021. According to legend, a group of 18 people gathered outside a church in the German town of Kolbigk and danced in a ring, clapping and chanting in unison. They ignored requests from a local priest to stop and it wasn’t until the following Christmas that they regained control of their bodies.

Medieval authors have written of another outbreak of a dancing plague, in which people danced uncontrollably, that swept through Europe in 1374 and again arose in the city of Strasbourg in 1518.

In her work Ingvartsen draws parallels between dancing mania and the way she felt after enduring the Covid-19 lockdowns; she was gripped by “inexplicable moments of uncontrollable dance”, she says. In Dancing Public she moves continuously to thumping beats for the entire performance and talks directly to the audience, eventually galvanising enough energy in the room to cause the spectators to start bopping in time. Thus, much like a plague, her dancing becomes contagious.

Ingvartsen in The Dancing Public. Picture: Hans Meijer

Ingvartsen’s performances at Rising won’t be her first before an Australian audience. She says the audience was shocked by her performance of 7 Pleasures as part of the Melbourne Festival in 2017, a reaction that is not uncommon in countries where nudity and sexuality are not so readily at the forefront of public life.

At a festival in Moscow, she says, the organisers censored the word “pornographies” from the title of her work so it was announced simply as “21”. Reflecting on whether her work 21 Pornographies could be described as pornography itself, Ingvartsen offers a thoughtful response.

“I was not busy with the question of pornography, I was busy with sexuality. And sexuality, of course, is a lot more than pornography.”

Ingvartsen will perform The Dancing Public on June 8 and 21 Pornographies on June 1-4 as part of Rising Festival in Melbourne.