Manual Focus

Mette Ingvartsen made her debut in 2003 with her choreography Manual Focus, which proved to be groundbreaking for her later work. In this dance piece, she emphasises physical actions and movements, regardless of psychological motivations that may lie behind them. This approach also characterises the works that followed in later years, in which Ingvartsen continues her uncomplicated explorations of the body and our perception with infectious enthusiasm.

Manual Focus is an almost sculptural work in which Ingvartsen's fascination with identity and binary oppositions shines through. The visual piece is an excellent example of her 'mission' in dance: in-depth research into the relationship between body, space and audience, to raise social and political issues.

In Manual Focus, Ingvartsen completely turns your gaze around, turning arms and legs upside down and switching front and back of the body. Naked women with masks of old men on the back of their heads turn into monstrous twelve-legged organisms. Animal bodies change from disorganised beings to humans without heads or other unnamed categories. An alienating sense of de-identification emerges in a continuous flow of transformation.

Mette Ingvartsen: "The masks were a starting point for how to blend masculine and feminine and how to blur the line between different categories. Not just male and female, but also artificial and real, naked and masked, or even just a general notion of supposedly fixed opposites. I wanted to try to blend opposites in a way that would make them inseparable.”