In Unchained Melody, Mette Ingvartsen uses love songs from different eras as a musical anchor for the choreography.

The movement follows the logic of water: ripples spread between the dancers, undercurrents draw them in new directions or into a swirl before calm returns and the surface settles.

The dancers sing as they move, a physical practice that puts the breath into play: the voice shifts, the tone breaks. Ingvartsen works deliberately with strong emotional affects, and in the meeting point of song, feeling, and dance, the performers navigate an ever-changing emotional seascape.

For Ingvartsen, love is more than a feeling; it is a social and political force that can erode what is hard or loosen what once seemed fixed. Unchained Melody is a performance in which song, moods, and movement flow into one another like waves on the sea.

During the Bergen International Festival, we also present a family performance of Unchained Melody on 30 May, welcoming audiences of all ages.

About Mette Ingvartsen

Mette Ingvartsen is a Danish choreographer and dancer with a company based in Brussels. Her internationally reclaimed 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. Besides performing, writing and lecturing, her practice includes teaching and sharing research through workshops with students at universities and art schools. In 2024 she received the lifetime achievement award from the Danish Arts Foundation.