THE LAUGHING CROWD – Antoinette Helbing
TOOK PLACE: 24 / 25 / 26 May & 29 / 30 / 31 May 20h00
PLACE: Refshalevej 171B, Refshaleøen – Cph. K
WHAT: Dance/performance
TICKET: 50 kr.
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A dance performance about laughter and community
The Laughing Crowd is a tribute to laughter in all its forms. This force of nature that has the power to occupy our body, our mind and our relationships with others. Maybe it will possess you…?
Laughter can create cohesion between people. It can be liberating, light and playful, but it can also be uncontrollable, uncomfortable and a tool for displaying power and hierarchies. What happens when we let go of control and make room for the wild, the ugly, the unfiltered?
The performance, which will premiere at Metropolis, is based on choreographer Antoinette Helbing’s successful solo The Laughing Game. This time she brings together eight dancers who examine the body of laughter together with a musician who creates the sound universe for this performance, which finds itself in-between dance, installation and concert. The performers stretch and magnify laughter’s physics, sound and the myriad of emotions that reside in laughter, reminding us to embrace our own and each other’s humanity.
As an audience, you can freely wander around the raw hall on Refshaleøen, where the industry of the past creates a high-ceilinged sound chamber that causes laughter to explode in all its unpolished shades.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Antoinette Helbing is a German choreographer based in Copenhagen. Her works are driven by a deep fascination with how the body enters into social interactions. She explores phenomena such as laughter, crying and how we humans create our self-image by interacting with each other.
She constructs social spaces that awaken the senses and allow the audience to interact. As an audience, you are close to the performers, and she often includes the audience’s behavior and reactions in the performances.
Antoinette Helbing is interested in the Feldenkrais method, and she has developed a choreographic practice that invites the audience to slow down and dive into the performance with all their senses.
REVIEW
“In the lovely company of choreographer and dancer Antoinette Helbing, the audience relationship was really and finely activated… The Laughing Game explored the physical manifestations of laughter, how it can come from within and spread throughout the body, how it can overpower one and is not to stop, how it can roll all the way down from the lower back up into the skull or can make one snap completely in half, so that sometimes it actually seems quite serious. But The Laughing Game is also a mini study in how laughter is an exchange. The audience smiles, giggles, chuckles, and laughs, but is also completely silent with Helbing.” – Bastard Blog about Helbing’s solo performance The Laughing Game
“Antoinette Helbing’s contagious laughter is soothing for body and mind and proof that laughter and smiles are basically social communication between people.” – Sceneblog about The Laughing Game
CREDIT
Choreographer: Antoinette Helbing
Dancers: Birgitte Skands, Daniel Norback, Max Wallmeier, Andreas Haglund, Beck Heiberg, Nanna Stigsdatter Mathiassen, Thjerza Balaj, Antoinette Helbing
Stand-ins: Jakob Schnack Krog og Katrien van der Velden
Dramaturge: Naya Moll
Composer: Randi Pontoppidan
Sound designer and technician: Emil Vodder Kristensen
Sound designer: Carina Backman
Costume designer: Inbal Lieblich
Producer: My Nilsson
Dramaturgical intern: Eglė Nešukaitytė
Administration: Dorte Burmester Wium/B&W Art and Support
Photo: Jan Vesala
Supported by Statens Kunstfonds Scenekunstudvalg and Musikudvalg, København Kommunes Scenekunstudvalg, William Demant Fonden, Island Connect residency programme and Augustinus Fonden.
Duration: 60 min.
Age: 15+
NB! The audience will stand and move around the hall. However, it will be possible to sit down if needed.
