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By Deirdre Towers/Follow @deirdre.towers on Instagram
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Published on September 30, 2025
SKATEPARK. Photo: Pierre Gondard
Choreographer: Mette Ingvartsen
Musicians: Felix Kubin, Mord Records, Why the eye, sonaBLAST! Records, Rrose, The Fanny Pads, Restive Plaggona
Dancers: Damien Delsaux, Manuel Faust, Aline Boas, Mary Pop Wheels, Sam Gelis, Fouad Nafili, Júlia Rúbies Subirós, Thomas Birzan, Briek Neuckermans, Indreas Kifleyesus, Arthur Vannes, Camille Gecchele, Mathias Thiers; Local dancers: Luca Castineira, Javi Harris, Max McCurdy, Morgan Nerud, Steve Roberts, Rily Searfoss
Lighting designer: Minna Tiikkainen
Set designer: Pierre Jambé/Antidote
September 25, 2025
"Keep rolling," chanted a young man as skateboarders looped in succession across a vast space, sided by ramps in SKATEPARK, the opening event for Powerhouse International New Arts Festival at Powerhouse Arts in Gowanus, Brooklyn.
Mary Pop Wheels, one of two roller skaters in their twenties, stoked the group energy with her infectious joy. Fun and focus, community and transcendence, define this catalytic happening shaped by jumps, falls, and glides.
The Danish choreographer Mette Ingvartsen has the minimalist approach of an anthropologist who recognizes the delicacy of rituals. She presents the young cast of SKATEPARK (created in 2023) as a documentarian might, inviting us to recognize the dynamics of this culture, the swoop of the skaters navigating obstacles, accelerating and stopping; all grooving on their collective flow.
Gradually, Ingvartsen adds elements to the ongoing skateboarding: a basketball, singing, masks, and perhaps best of all — darkness. Two skaters lay on their backs, still. Dream logic follows. A skater waves a massive white flag. Individuals dance, without their boards, cathartically. Giant speakers, held by masked bearers, veer toward the audience.
This festival is blessed with a home, the brilliant re-imagining of the 117-year-old Brooklyn Rapid Transit Power Station. Decommissioned in the 1950s, the remaining structure was nicknamed “the Batcave” by graffiti artists and squatters. Set along the canal, today's space hums with the industry of resident ceramicists, print makers, and other craftsmen, whose works are sold in a store within the building.
While 700 skateparks are scattered across 50 US states, the 60-year-old sport of skateboarding has rarely been presented within an arts festival; chalk one up for Powerhouse: International's Artistic Director David Binder. Without classical framing, timing, or shaping, SKATEPARK still inspires a range of possible combinations of dance and skating, and other opportunities, not taken. Competitive figure skating evolved into ice dancing, swimming into water ballet, so too could skateboarders soon stretch their sport.
Meanwhile, Ingvartsen invites us to consider the resources of the young who seek safe spaces to channel their restlessness, gain an equilibrium, and perhaps experience a state of grace.
