Snapping 2025 / Snap Dance, by Michael Laub A multi-screen video installation at the French Institute
- Editorial team
- 15 hours ago
- 2 min read
The Institut français du Cambodge is proud to present Snapping 2025 / Snap Dance, an immersive video installation by Michael Laub co-produced with NGO Phare Ponleu Selpak, as part of Digital November 2025.
This year, Digital November continues to promote access to new technologies for all while showcasing the diversity of digital artistic creation, from immersive experiences and digital arts to innovative audiovisual performances. Through this installation, the Institut français du Cambodge contributes to this global exploration of how digital technology is shaping our relationship with art, creation and society.
An internationally renowned Belgian artist and pioneer of post-dramatic theater, Michael Laub is recognized for his ability to blend realism and fiction, transforming everyday life and cinema into powerful scenic and visual experiences. From Berlin to Battambang, he tirelessly explores through his art the beauty, struggle and vitality of real lives, transforming personal narratives and everyday gestures into artistic material.
In 2005, critic Rosita Boisseau wrote in Le Monde:
"Michael Laub positions himself as someone freed from all theatrical categories. Using dance, text, video and music without hierarchy, he creates a plural, rhythmic writing that multiplies reading possibilities."
In 2024, Michael Laub presented, in collaboration with Vanthy Khen, dancers from the Royal University of Fine Arts and Secondary School of Fine Arts, as well as with dancers from Phare Ponleu Selpak and the support of the Institut français du Cambodge, the creation Madison Now. He returns today with a new artistic exploration, this time centered on moving images and filmed choreography.
Snapping 2025 / Snap Dance is a multi-screen video installation where dancers move without music, guided only by rhythm, breath and emotion. Conceived and produced in Cambodia, this work is a return to Laub’s minimalist origins and reinvents his iconic installation Snapping (1981), initially created in Belgium, Sweden and Thailand, by revisiting it through the prism of contemporary dance.
A gallery of Cambodian portraits unfolds on screen — sometimes intriguing, sometimes hypnotic — capturing the power and fragility of human movement. This series of video portraits presents a range of individuals of intriguing diversity, and Snap Dance captures dancers ranging from ballet to hip-hop. The dancers move without music; the viewer only hears their steps, their breathing, the rustling of their costumes and, of course, the snapping of their fingers.
Carried by an eclectic cast, blending apsara dance, classical ballet and hip-hop, the piece invites the audience to experience a unique sensory journey, where each step, each breath and each rustle becomes rhythm.
Come share this new experience with us!
Opening reception Wednesday, November 12 at 6pm at the Institut français du Cambodge
Installation visible from 12/11/25 to 15/11/2025 in 3 steps at IFC: first the exhibition gallery, then Le Bistrot and finally in the cinema