Skatepark Mette Ingvartsen
Freesheet
About Skatepark
How did you come to make a piece inspired by skateparks?
The idea for Skatepark came about four years ago. I was spending a lot of time with my two kids at Ursulines Skatepark, in the centre of Brussels, and I was very impressed by the speed and precision of the skaters there. It took me back to my teenage years, when I was roller-skating myself, and to that feeling of being on wheels and gliding through space – to the flow of movement and the sensation of being able to defy physical laws.
But it wasn’t only the fluidity of movement that made me interested in working on a performance. It was also the obvious hard work and repetition – the sheer persistence of a skater who wants to pull off a difficult move and simply won’t give up. You really see how laborious and time-consuming it is to become good enough to glide on wheels and feel a sense of freedom – and that was a contradiction I found very interesting. Fluidity and flow doesn’t come on its own, but is something that needs to be planned out, rehearsed, tried, and tested. Within that I found a metaphor for society in general. What if a skatepark was a microcosm of the world? What would we be able to learn from it?
Skateboarding also has its own culture and history – how did that influence the piece?
Skateboarding has an origin story about a group of surfers in California who one day, when the waves were low, made the jump from sea to asphalt. It’s a story that influenced me quite strongly – though I later learned from a feminist writer that skateboarding was actually invented well before then! Still, the transformation of one practice into another was inspiring when I started to consider the choreographic potential of skateboarding.
There’s a documentary that captures the emergence of skateboarding in California, Dogtown and Z-Boys, where you see how skateboarding was bound up with acts of rebellion and trespass on private properties. The skaters in the film, some of whom later became legends in the field, would drain swimming pools and skate in the empty basins until police arrived. I became interested in these roots of skateboarding as an anti-establishment practice, a counterculture, a rebellion – as an anarchistic and anti-capitalist approach to private property.
Today, skateparks are both loved and hated by skaters. Some think that skateboarding belongs in urban spaces which haven’t been ‘designed’ for skating, others are happy to finally have a ‘free’ space to skate in without having to deal with noise complaints or repeated encounters with the police. I’m interested in the tension between these two perspectives, and the piece, I hope, is also a reflection of this dual understanding of what skateboarding is. It is at once an anti-establishment practice and a highly commercialised activity. It is freedom co-opted by capitalism, but it also still offers a genuine possibility to feel unrestricted and empowered.
About Mette Ingvartsen
Mette Ingvartsen is a Danish choreographer and dancer. Her work is characterized by hybridity and engages in extending choreographic practices by combining dance and movement with other domains such as visual arts, technology, language and theory. An important strand of her work was developed between 2009 and 2012 with The Artificial Nature Series, in which she focused on reconfiguring relations between human and non-human agency through choreography. By contrast her series, The Red Pieces (2014-2017) inscribes itself into a history of human performance with a focus on nudity, sexuality and how the body historically has been a site for political struggles.
In 2019, she premiered Moving in Concert, an abstract group choreography, that focuses on the interlacing between humans, technological tools and natural materials. The Life Work, an in situ project with elderly people in the Ruhr region in Germany which addresses migration issues and a new solo, The Dancing Public, inspired by a fascination for dancing manias throughout history, premiered in 2021. In 2023 Skatepark premiered, a large-scale performance for skaters, dancers and the local skatepark communities. And in the beginning of 2024, she presented RUSH, a solo performance for Manon Santkin that draws on 20 years of collaboration. The year 2025 will bring two new creations by Mette Ingvartsen: Delirious Night premiers at KFDA in May, followed shortly after by Choreomania, a graduation piece performed by 40 students from P.A.R.T.S.
Mette Ingvartsen established her company in 2003 and her work has since then been shown throughout Europe, as well as in the U.S, Canada, South Korea, Taiwan and Australia. She has been artist in residence at the Kaaitheater in Brussels, Volksbühne in Berlin, as well as associated to the APAP network.
Mette Ingvartsen holds a PhD in choreography from Stockholm University of the Arts / Lund University and graduated prior to that from the performing arts school P.A.R.T.S in Brussels. Besides performing, writing and lecturing, her practice includes teaching and sharing her research through workshops with students at universities and art schools. She has collaborated and performed with Xavier Le Roy, Bojana Cvejic, Jan Ritsema and Boris Charmatz, as well as invested in collective research projects such as the artist platform EVERYBODYS (2005-2010), the educational project Six Months, One Location (2008) and the performative conference The Permeable Stage (2016-ongoing).
In 2024, Mette Ingvartsen received the lifetime achievement award from the Danish Arts Foundation.
Artistic Team & Credits
Concept & Choreography Mette Ingvartsen
With Damien Delsaux, Manuel Faust, Aline Boas, Mary Pop Wheels, Sam Gelis, Fouad Nafili, Júlia Rúbies Subirós, Thomas Bîrzan, Indreas Kifleyesus, Mathias Thiers, Bob Aertsen, Bo Huyghebaert and local skaters
Sound Design Anne van de Star, Peter Lenaerts
Lighting Design Minna Tiikkainen
Music Felix Kubin, Mord Records, Why the eye, sonaBLAST! Records, Rrose, The Fanny Pads, Restive Plaggona
Dramaturgy Bojana Cvejić
Costumes Jennifer Defays
Scenography Pierre Jambé/Antidote
Technical Design Set Stéphane Thonnard
Construction Set Construction workshop of Théâtre National Bruxelles: Joachim Pochet, Joachim Hesse, Pierre Jardon, Yves Philippaerts, Andrea Messana, Boyd Gates
Technical Direction Hans Meijer
Sound Technicians Milan Van Doren, Yrjänä Rankka, Filip Vilhelmsson
Lighting Technicians Bennert Vancottem, Jan-Simon De Lille, Sil Verdickt
Choreographic Assistant Jacob Ingram-Dodd
Supervisor Kids Billie Meeussen, Victor Perez Hernandez
Production and Administration Officer Joey Ng
Production Oihana Azpillaga Camio
Communication Jeroen Goffings
Management Ruth Collier
Production Great Investment vzw
Coproduction La Danse en grande forme (Cndc – Angers, Malandain Ballet Biarritz, La Manufacture CDCN Nouvelle-Aquitaine Bordeaux · La Rochelle, CCN de Caen en Normandie, L’échangeur – CDCN Hauts-de-France, CCN2 – Grenoble, La Briqueterie – CDCN du Val de Marne, CCN – Ballet national de Marseille, CCN de Nantes, CCN d’Orléans, Atelier de Paris / CDCN, Le Gymnase CDCN Roubaix – Hauts-de-France, La Place de La Danse – CDCN Toulouse – Occitanie, La MC2 – Grenoble), Ruhrtriennale, Wiener Festwochen & Tanzquartier Wien, La Villette & Théâtre Chaillot, deSingel, Kaaitheater & Théâtre National Wallonie-Bruxelles, Kunstencentrum VIERNULVIER, Next Festival, Charleroi danse centre chorégraphique de Wallonie – Bruxelles, Theater Rotterdam, Perpodium
Supported by: Fondation d’entreprise Hermès, Wilhelm Hansen Fonden
Residency Rosas, Charleroi danse centre chorégraphique de Wallonie – Bruxelles, deSingel
Great Investment is supported by The Flemish Authorities, The Flemish Community Commission (VGC), Tax Shelter of the Belgian Federal Government & The Danish Arts Council
