Review: 100 tapaa nauraa

Laughter circulates


Watching others laugh can be embarrassing or liberating. If you get to join in with the other person’s bubbly giggles, the joy of togetherness can be created. If not, the gap between people widens. Helsinki Dance Company and Karttunen Kollektiv’s 100 Ways to Laugh performance moves in just this kind of terrain of laughter and laughter.

The choreography of Jyrki Karttunen , who will start as HDC’s artistic director, moves in an exciting atmosphere that could be described as saturated with serious laughter. Of course, the performance is built on a lot of humour, but it explores the mechanisms related to laughter just as much. And especially how different ways of laughing can be turned into movement.

100 Ways to Laugh contains a series of scenes in which laughter is danced and laughter while dancing. With Tuomas Fränti’s sound design, the moods tune from pathetic ridiculousness to gentle joy.

The scenes are charmingly tied together by the familiar smiley character, i.e. a yellow smiley creature, which in this performance is embodied as a lumpy lump. Huge thighs and handsome belly sausages covered in yellow full jersey appeal with their sympathy.

The funniest scenes arise when there are a whole bunch of these lumps on stage and when they clumsily start dancing and doing tricks. Karttunen occasionally makes use of elements of circus, when either lumps or dancers in everyday costumes perform their own kind of acrobatic acts on mattresses and even jumping a little over them.

The work is performed wonderfully by the company’s five permanent dancers and three guests. In addition to these eight dancers, each performance features a rotating group of theatre enthusiasts who have participated in laughter workshops related to the performance. The participation of an amateur group does not add anything to the performance.

The finest scenes depict how laughter creeps through the leg into the body, slowly making the whole body tremble and shake until it escapes and bursts away through the hand. Kai Lahdesmäki, Eero Vesterinen and Aksinja Lommi describe this cycle of laughter excellently in their own scenes.

Fits of joy, hysterical giggles, frozen laughter, sad joy, all the gestures of laughter in the world fit into the performance and get their moving version either in solos or group scenes. However, the work drags on too long and the scenes start to repeat themselves.

Some of the audience laugh out loud enthusiastically throughout the performance, while others remain silent, perhaps silently giggling. There are at least a hundred ways to laugh.