Danced sculpture in thin body-covering clothing

Fantasy and passion are the literal driving force behind the Danish choreographer Mette Ingvartsen’s new production To Come, that just now had its premiere in Pact Zollverein.

Actually this work is about the fractioning, the disintegration of man, his drive and his feelings. What can we do, what do we want to do, how do we reveal ourselves in specific situations? And this is what Mette Ingvartsen and her group of five performers – young, colourful and powerful – now showed on stage.

First the dancers appear wrapped head to foot in blue cloth. Faceless, deindividualized and in strong spotlight, they give themselves over to erotically straightforward movements. In this they seem like sculpture groups in varying formations. Slowly and composed, almost classic, silent, even without music, except for some few fragments of faint vocal music, as a ghostlike presence.

Later, the five dancers – three women (among whom the choreographer) and two men – step out of their body-cocoons, turn into individuals and now get into the vocal aspect they were bereft of in the first part. They groan, sigh and cry. They partly take up the formations they danced through in the previous part, as if in a composition in changing cast.

Without a break the piece moves into the third and wildest part. Whirling rock-and-roll steps, thumping rhythms, but also virtuosic and impeccably synchronous jumps: this group is young and well-trained.

Of course it is no use trying to look for stories in the work of Ingvartsen. There are brief connections that untie rapidly, constantly giving way to new formations. It is like an icon of modern man: broken up, deprived of inner coherence. And maybe that is why the choreography is so exciting.

- Dirk Aschendorf, WAZ, June 4 2005 - translated by Tom Hannes -