Funny peculiar WCD show uses laughter to unite and alienate in work exploring discomfort of the ‘here and now’ By: Jen Zoratti Posted: 3:00 AM CDT Thursday, Apr. 21, 2022

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This article was published 21/04/2022 (1288 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Six dancers are assembled in a line, staring at the audience. They erupt into gales of laughter.

Laughter is a great contagion; one person’s case of the giggles quickly spreads to everyone — eyes weeping, sides aching. No one laughs exactly alike, which is probably why there are so many words to describe laughter: guffaw, chortle, snicker, wheeze, chuckle, snort.

The laughing continues, but there’s something off about it now. The skittering electronic score gives way to a persistent ticking. “This isn’t even funny,” one of the dancers remarks between gasps. “What are we laughing at?” asks another, laughing still.

Laughter is not always the result of joy or humour. Laughter can be uneasy. Laughter can be involuntary. Laughter can be cruel.

“I find that laughter is a very complex behaviour,” says Jolene Bailie, the artistic director of Winnipeg’s Contemporary Dancers and the choreographer of In Between Here and Now, a new work premièring Friday in which the laughing tableau is featured.

“It can be a nervous reaction, laughing, but it also brings us together. Or something awful happens and two weeks later you’re able to laugh about it with people, where two weeks ago you couldn’t. Laughter can be revealing and also relieving, and I think there’s something beautiful about that.”

Laughter is also the perfect entry point to crafting a work that explores the discomfort inherent in “being present.”

“I do feel like there’s this sort of tension and uneasiness in relationships where, even when you’re trying to be really in the present moment, you can’t help but think about the future or the past, or where you might be wanting to go — or where you might not be wanting to go,” Bailie says.

That uneasiness hums through all parts of the choreography. “It kind of feels like the movements we’re doing are uncanny valley,” says dancer Shawn Maclaine, who is joined in the work by dancers Carol-Ann Bohrn, Kira Hofmann, Julious Gambalan, Warren McClelland and Shayla Rudd. “It’s so close to being what we’re used to, but just a little bit off. The laughing changes, depending on what your eyes do. Sometimes my eyes aren’t laughing, but my mouth is.”

That discomfort is an especially relevant premise to explore as we begin to emerge from the liminal space created by the pandemic.

“We’re in this bit of, like, treading water,” Bailie says. “But we’re also discovering all these new things about life and the world if we weren’t treading water.”

In Between Here and Now is the first show from Winnipeg’s Contemporary Dancers since the pandemic began to feature a full cast of dancers who are able, once again, to partner and touch — which, like all things coming out of a time of physical distancing, took some figuring out.

“Last year, we were distanced on stage and we weren’t partnering or touching or anything,” McClelland says. “We’ve brought that back, so then we’re also like, how are we touching this person? Are they comfortable with that touch? How are we manoeuvring around those things? Our first rehearsal where we did partner, we were tossing around a tennis ball just to be like, this is new, this is touch, we’re both touching the same item. So that was also a big part of it. We’re re-finding interactions, whether it be physical or vocal.” (“Re-finding interactions” may indeed be the best way to describe our current late-pandemic vibe.)

It didn’t take long for them to find a rhythm in Bailie’s choreography, which features all manner of architectural lifts. For some, it felt like a homecoming.

Rudd has been dancing with Gambalan for a decade, but they haven’t been able to partner during the pandemic. She recalls the first time he lifted her after a two-year absence.

“It wasn’t until I was, like, no limbs on the ground, suspended in the air, that I actually realized that this is something that I missed and something that I actually needed, too,” she says.

Figuring out how to laugh on command, meanwhile, took a different kind of work.

“I think at first, it was a bit uncomfortable,” Hofmann says. “In the beginning it’s almost like you’re trying to force yourself to laugh. You just have sound coming out and it’s like, ‘OK, how do I make it sound natural?’”

To that end, Winnipeg playwright, actor and director Debbie Patterson provided the dancers with vocal coaching, helping them connect to their breath and vocal ranges in laughter. “I would actually find moments where I was genuinely laughing,” Hofmann says.

“It’s like singing in a choir,” Bohrn adds. “You feel supported by other voices. It’s so much harder alone, and there are moments in the show where we do laugh alone and it feels totally different to me.

“I’m looking forward to having people in the audience because of that mirror neuron effect: sometimes you’re laughing, not because you find it funny, but just because that’s what’s happening in the room. You can really draw from the energy of all the humans around you. It is so contagious.”

jen.zoratti@winnipegfreepress.com

Twitter: @JenZoratti