Laughing Hole – La Ribot
Posted by bellanna on April 20, 2008
Photo: Anna van Kooij
“I am interested in speaking about presentation, more than representation”. These words of La Ribot (Maria Ribot) summarise her own way of understanding the cutting edge which modern dance has come to be. La Ribot mixes performance, dance and theatre; as a result, she can be said to “think with her body”. As Castro Flórez wrote: “all her choreographic pieces have a mixture of presence and, at the same time, an expression of a process that undermines them”.
Set in the chapel of the Central Museum of Utrecht, the Netherlands, Laughing Hole is an overwhelming experience. I was immediately drawn into the performance by the cacophony of laughter swirling from the three performers’ bodies, through microphones, fed into a computer, and expelled in a loop through three amplifiers. The floor of the space (approximately 60 m2) was strewn with cardboard signs, all face down, hiding their message temporarily. The performers moved through the space, bodies twisting and gliding with continuous laughter. It’s difficult to say how long I stayed sitting on the floor with my back against the wall. I thought I could have stayed their for hours and hours on end, watching more and more words and phrases being stuck on the wall with broad bands of brown tape.
A woman with a baby on her lap was noting the performance intently; the child was oblivious to the shouts and shrieks of laughter, and was more interested in the floor. Some visitors were smiling, laughing out loud even; some remained motionless, whereas others moved around in the space, following the tracks of the performers. The phrases on the cardboard signs already attached to the wall of the chapel read “over 40s mum”, “Guantanamo beach”, “death in detention”, “die laughing”, “impotent words”. The statements, personal and political, grotesque and abstract, lost their meaning through the cloud of other letters and laughter that surrounded them. Or rather, they achieved a new meaning through the other, multiple inputs that framed them. The laughter sometimes transformed into crying, at least that is what my auditory system made of it, after having been exposed to similar sounds for many minutes on end. Only when the cacophony of laughter was doubly looped did I stand up and walk away. Suddenly, it was too much to handle. Outside the museum the bells of the church rang, though sounded like laughter.
