Lachen @ Antonia Baehr. 2008

- BAEHR Antonia, Lachen, 2008. (photo: Julie Pagnier)

‘‘Antonia Baehr is a choregrapher. What characteristises her is a non-disciplinary work and a method of collaboration with different people, using a game-structure with switching roles: each person is alternately director/author/host and performer/guest for the other one’’ (make up productions). Baehr is preoccupied with the live element of theatre, and she often works with scores. She not only destabilises gender categories, but also distinctions between high and low and art, choreography and music. In her work as a choreographer, actress and dramatic advisor, she often works with Valerie Castan, Lindy Annis, Antonija Livingstone, William Wheeler, Ezther Salamon and Vincent Dupont, among others. She is also the ‘producer’ of the horse whisperer and dancer Werner Hirsch as well as the musician and choreographer Henri Fleur and the composer Henry Wilt.

‘‘What is my main feature,’’ Antonia Baehr asked her friends. ‘‘Your laugh,’’ they replied. For a self-portrait project, Baehr asked her friends to compose scores for her laugh on her birthday. After this, she began to present these live. Baehr explores laughter as a form of expression in its own right, independent of causes, by focusing on the act itself: the sound, the form, the rhythm and the gestures of laughter. Although comedy may not be her intention, the mechanism of shared laughter is a performance element. Lachen was also part of the Performance Programm of re.act. feminism 2009.