In the Presence of the Plague. The Political Aesthetics of the Hysterical Gesture in Mette Ingvartsen’s The Dancing Public

Abstract

What can an infectious disease reveal about the body as a site for political contestation? Departing from Antonin Artaud’s insistence on the affinity between death and art, this article examines the critical and subversive potential of post-Covid-19 dance performances through an analysis of Mette Ingvartsen’s performance, The Dancing Public (2021). Her exploration of the transmissibility of bodily gestures and the dynamics of close-quarter contact after a year of social distancing will be compared to Giorgio Agamben’s critique of the Covid-19 biosecurity state as well as to Jacques Rancière’s notion of the emancipated spectator. In tracing and re-enacting the tradition of choreomania and hysteria as a mute bodily testimony of past suffering and injustice, Ingvartsen establishes the power of dance as an emancipatory outlet and an affirmation of the living body as a political being.