THE LAUGHING GAME – Sounded Bodies

The Laughing game is a solo dance work that explores laughter as a force of nature. A choreographic exploration that navigates through laughters’ heterogenous physical and emotional landscapes and that portrays laughter as an act of human belonging and empathy as well as embodied answer to emotional overload. THE LAUGHING GAME oscillates between a dance, an installation and a concert. Body and voice are employed to unfold laughter as social communication, bodily state, stirring sound and as an explosive way of losing control. Breaking with the common sense of looking at laughter as only being funny, laughing will be portrayed as a physical manifestation of a broad range of mixed feelings. Exposing the wide range of emotions present within laughter, its contagious force and its liberating effect, laughter is being alienated – as an invitation for the audience to encounter laughter with fresh eyes and sharp senses.
The audience experiences the performance in close proximity as the spectators are invited to share the performance area with the performer who will move among them. That way the performer and the audience will blend, making all individuals visible, inviting to observe each other and giving the feeling that everyone is part of the performance. Some will be helplessly caught in the contagiousness of the performer’s laughter while others are purely observant. This kind of gentle engagement of the audience situates the work at the verge of interactivity as the spectators will be transformed into participants by their pure presence and without asking them to do anything specific.

Concept, Choreography and Dance: Antoinette Helbing
Sound design: Niels Bjerg
Light design: Carina Backmann Persson
Costume: Inbal Lieblich

Supported by the Creative Europe program of the European Union – Island Connect.
Duration: 30 min