Delirious Night

“In Delirious Night, Mette Ingvartsen proposes a sensory, almost delirious journey — an immersion into trance, rhythm, and the power of the collective body. Themes of exhaustion, euphoria, resistance, and collapse run through the hour-long performance. … Ingvartsen taps into shared emotions of our time: the need to resist, the desire to connect, the will to keep moving. The piece was one of the standout performances at this year’s Madrid en Danza, confirming Ingvartsen’s place as a leading voice in politically engaged contemporary dance.”
– D. Prieto (El Mundo)

“Mette Ingvartsen gives no lesson and no explanation. The piece is to be seen as it is: an act of resistance, first and foremost a physical principle, a seventy-five-minute marathon pushing the body to its limits. Delirious Night is the contemporary fable of a metamorphosis. When bodies no longer respond, animality takes over.”
– L. Goumarre (Libération)

“A tribal, primitive energy overtakes us as we watch the dancers exhaust themselves on stage. A telluric, urgent dance drives this piece. At times it borders on trance, at others on bacchanals… The performance leaves us worn out, yet full of life and a revitalizing joy.”
– E. Serafini (Inferno magazine)

“What if excess were a way of surviving? In Delirious Night, Mette Ingvartsen orchestrates a staged trance that is at once wild, erudite, and sensual. Mixing medieval rituals with post-rave references, the choreographer summons the history of bodies in revolt to make crisis dance. A total performance: vibrant, inhabited, and profoundly political.”
– F. Bonfils (Foudart)

“Delirious Night is anything but smooth, consensual or restful. The Danish choreographer deploys a powerful gesture: a very organic dance, raw and bestial, that seizes the stage — aggressive and sensual, ecstatic and obsessive. Hats off to the performers, overflowing with energy and giving themselves without reserve. The same goes for the drummer, who pounds away from start to finish. A choreographed trance — bouncing, gripping, sometimes disturbing, often energizing.”
– S. Bauret (Le Dauphiné)

“Delirious Night takes inspiration from the ‘dance epidemic’ recorded in Strasbourg over several weeks in 1518, when people were gripped by a mania to keep dancing – some of them right until death. The hysteria is captured in a banner on stage: “Attitudes Passionelles.” But the febrile atmosphere that Ingvartsen captures is of our own Covid era: that strange combination of collective unity and fear, dissociation and division, the rumble of protest and the potential to rebuild. The stage fills with bodies seeking connection, the mood somewhere between campfire shindig and unruly protest.”
– C. Wiegand (The Guardian)