Dance House Helsinki presents (LA)HORDE / Ballet national de Marseille: Age of Content

Emerging from the Paris underground artist scene, Marine Brutti, Jonathan Debrouwer and Arthur Harel have turned their trio (LA)HORDE into a trailblazer of contemporary art – a hyped phenomenon whose influence reaches beyond the stage into fashion, film and music. Since 2019, the collective has led Ballet National de Marseille, bringing the company to the forefront of international contemporary dance.

(LA)HORDE is known for works exploring post-internet dance, examining movement forms born and circulated online, and how digital culture reshapes the ways bodies are presented. Their pieces draw from fashion, video games and club scenes, bringing the aesthetics of virtual worlds and pop culture onto the stage.

The acclaimed Age of Content is a powerful showcase of their vision – a visually stunning work on how the digital era transforms embodiment, desire, and our ways of connecting with one another.

The title plays with meaning: it refers both to an age flooded with content and to the age of consent – the threshold at which one is considered capable of giving sexual consent. But to what extent do we still own our bodies – our consent – in the virtual realm?

On stage, 18 dancers of the Ballet National de Marseille move like characters in a video game. Avatar-like figures perform movement languages familiar from virtual worlds, such as jumpstyle, twerking, vogue, along with echoes of 1970s postmodern dance. Different influences and aesthetics intertwine into an electric dance hybrid of the future.