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Antonia Baehr is a German choreographer, director, performer and filmmaker. She co-founded the Berlin-based performance group ex machinis and is known for her work across disciplines, with a broad range of collaborators. Baehr began her research on the act of laughing by asking friends for birthday gifts of ‘laugh scores’; compositions concentrating on the act of laughing and not the need to be funny. From this, grew her desire to explore laughter in isolation from jokes, humour, joy or even tickling. Standing alone on stage she begins to laugh, without reason, allowing the audience to take in the qualities of laughter that would normally go unnoticed; its sound, rhythm, music and drama. Inevitably, the auditorium becomes a mirror to what is happening on stage and it spreads to those spectating, contamination being the unavoidable by-product of laughter. A cult hit on the European arts scene since it debuted in 2008, these performances in the Lilian Baylis Studio mark Antonia Baehr’s first UK appearance.