Please Dance Happily and Freely 欢乐地跳吧
Multimedia installation comprising dual-channel video,
spatialized audio, and interactive choreographic environments
22′59″
Please Dance Happily and Freely is a multimedia installation and choreographic research project that examines how female bodies are choreographed, conditioned, and reimagined within structured systems. Rooted in a long-term mother-daughter practice, the work unfolds across public dancing squares and migrant neighborhoods, tracing two parallel choreographic paths. Here, dance becomes a shared language—one that traverses silence, borders, and histories.
At the heart of the project lies the Dap—a wooden frame drum of bone and skin. Once it carried divine rhythms—alive, unwritten. Then it was pinned down, inscribed, and reproduced. Now it moves again, reconnecting bodies across the Eurasian continent, inviting them to remember what cannot be written.
The installation revolves around five rhythmic systems: examination choreography, radio calisthenics, staged ethnic performance, ritual whirling, and wedding improvisation. These rhythms shape how bodies move, remember, and relate—each carrying traces of discipline, joy, and ancestral memory.
Floor projections sketch shifting formations, guiding visitors through choreographic patterns. Wall texts appear as commands from an unseen choreographer. Whispered voice tracks drift through the space—private utterances between dancers, at once resistant and complicit. Within the fractures of imposed rhythms, fleeting moments of freedom may emerge. As a viewer, you witness how systems are embodied in movement. As a dance, you may disrupt, subvert, or reclaim the choreography placed upon your body.
Extending into a long-term participatory workshop, the artist invites women from diverse cultural backgrounds to explore these rhythmic vocabularies together. Within irregular beats, they search for unspoken gestures and dormant memories—rehearsing ways to unlearn, and to imagine new rhythms between the ones inherited.
“Please dance happily and freely” becomes both a cheerful command and a quiet provocation:
Whose rhythm do you dance to?
What does your body remember?
Installation：
Performance：
Multimedia installation : Password: PDHF2025
Publications & Instrument Collection：
The Sapayi (ساپايى) made by the Tianjin National Musical Instrument Factory in the 1960s.
(Sapayi is a rhythmic instrument played by Ashiq, the traveling bard.)
Dap collected in Turpan, in July 2024.
Decoration collected in Bukhara, Uzbekistan, in September 2024.
Zine:
The National Meshrep Square Dance Directory, a community-maintained guide listing dance groups and schedules nationwide, and The Meshrep Score, which traces the transformation of Meshrep from ritual to stage to public square using historical dance materials.
Designer Jasper Yi Cao
Published by Cactus Press
Events:
展览访谈｜从冬天舞到春天所以，跳起来吧！即使这看上去根本不像舞蹈
Review:
Metropolis M (2025) — Graduation Special—highlighting outstanding graduates from the
Netherlands and Belgium By Helena Julian
Metropolis M (2025) — Going ahead, ‘Meanwhile’, coming back – HKU MAFA Graduation
Show 2025 By Francisco Baquerizo-Racines
Exhibition：
2026.01.10–01.31/04.28-05.20— Please Dance Happily and Freely, LaiLai HuiHui, Changsha, China
2025.11.04–12.04 — Asian Triennial Manchester, United Kingdom
Single-channel video work in Tiong Ang’s multi-channel installation Erase Us (Rrrythms)
2025.06.18–06.29 — Meanwhile, BAK Basecamp, Utrecht, The Netherlands
Performance and Workshop：
2025.06 — BAK Basecamp, Utrecht, The Netherlands
2026.01 — LaiLai HuiHui, Changsha, China
Workshops Working in Process：
1.0 Dance Workshop and Video Essay: 2024.06 HKU Loods
2.0 Changes, Interruptions, and Discussions on Dance Rhythms: 2024.10 Casco
3.0 Body Memory and Poetic Documentation: 2024.12 HKU Theater
4.0 Projected Formations, Body Memory, and Discipline: 2025.04 HKU Blackbox