Viewmaster (2007)

The viewmaster explores pre-cinema technology - using a well know optical illusion called the 'pepper effect', the viewmaster proposes an archaic cinema, one that uses live images in the form of reflections versus projected ones.

Since the invention of projection in the late 19th century, film has become practically synonymous with the cinema or movie theater. Modeled after the traditional theater dispositive, the place where films are shown is a divided space: on the one hand is the screen, acting as a window onto an imaginary depth, and on the other, the auditorium, acting as a single, shared point of view, occupied by an audience that sit immobile in the dark.

The viewmaster reconfigures this traditional set-up, proposing a cinema where auditorium and screen are reversible, where multiple view points are possible and where the visitor can be both viewer and participant within a live image making process.

Based on an optical trick made popular in the theater and predating the invention of projection technology, the viewmaster make use of light, reflection and the presence of the spectators to create an ever changing array of moving images.

Considered a tool for gallery spaces as well as the theaters, the viewmaster was co produced by in Netwerk / Center for Contemporary Art for an exhibition September 15th - October 20th, 2007 with performances the 5th and 20th of October.

next performances -

Dedonderdagen @ DeSingel, Antwerp February 14th
Kaaitheater Studios August 29th - September 7th
Vooruit Gent, Almost Cinema October 7th - 18th


Concept / performance Heike Langsdorf & Ula Sickle concept / architecture Laurent Liefooghe sound design Peter Connelly light design Hans Meijer production management for Rebecca September vzw Natalie Schrauwen With the support of: KC Netwerk Aalst, kunst-werk / f,r,o,g,s - OS, Nadine, wp Zimmer and the Flemish Minister for Youth, Culture, Sport and Brussels Affairs. A Rebecca September production.




Photo: Josephine Hirschi / Film: Sebastian Koeppel

Im/possible figures (2006)

Impossible figures shows a virtuosic metamorphose of manneristic poses. It proposes variations on a set of stills (or poses) and their connecting movements. During the piece, the sets evolve from a purely physical investigation of the relation between immobility (poses) and movement, to a play with the expressive and dramatic qualities of those same poses. From physical to superficial/surface, impossible figures unfolds around the paradoxical couplings: real-impossible and body-image.

Im/possible Figures is a work inspired by the baroque period in music and painting. Translated into a contemporary language of images and movement, the work explores the baroque obsession with twisted forms and ornamentation, affectation and expression, in a research on the possibilities and limits of the performing body.

Choreographed and performed by Ula Sickle | Sound design Christina Clar | Light design Ann Sophie Hoste | Scenography and dramaturgy Laurent Liefooghe | Scenography realization Natalie Schrauwen, Peter de Goy | Production wp Zimmer | co-production cc Berchem, wp Zimmer

Special thanks to Wiesława Pikula, Marc Vanrunxt, Domenico Guistino, Erica Trivett, wp Zimmer, Nadine and kc Netwerk.

Photo: Laurent Liefooghe & Ula Sickle

Knockout (2005)

"A dreary night in Rome, on the soundtrack the click of a cigarette lighter, the sound of smoke being inhaled. A woman in a long raincoat with a platinum blond wig lounging on a street corner. It could not be more typically film noir. These few details hint at a world of seduction and betrayal, of double moral standards and romantic cynicism. It is precisely that twilight zone from which the collective Rebecca September drew its inspiration for its first performance, Knockout."

The collective’s name refers to Hitchcock’s American debut: Rebecca. The performance Knockout noticeably uses Hitchcock elements as well: the two dancers are each other’s mirror image, their faces hidden behind a blond and dark wig. Just like the splitting up of the mysterious main character Madeleine/Judy in Hitchcock’s Vertigo, the performance plays on the two-sided suggestiveness of eroticism and morality: the femme fatale veiled in platinum blond virtuousness.

Knockout could very well be a choreographed variant of David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive; an out of joint montage of constructed fantasies, desires and expectations."
Elke Van Campenhout, De Standaard

Concept Rebecca September | Choreography Ula Sickle | Developed & Performed by Tawny Andersen & Ula Sickle | Sound Design Peter Lenaerts | Scenography Alexis Destoop | Assitant Nele Ana Riepl | Produced by wp Zimmer for Rebecca September vzw | Co-produced by Pact Zollverein Essen. | With the support of Dans In Kortrijk, Netwerk Aalst, Nadine Brussels, The Canada Council for the Arts & the Flemish Minister for Culture, Youth, Sport and Brussels Affairs.

A Rebecca September production.






Photo: Alexis Destoop / Film: Peter Lenearts

figure f (2004)

Forms are folded matter, the body is matter formed and folded.
I fit the folded forms of my body into the frame of a performance.
The performance is framed by its beginning and end,
It is folded in time and space, between the opening and closing curtains.

Figure F is a short solo inspired by the baroque period in music and painting. Working on basic notions of rhythm and composition, Figure F goes on to explore the baroque obsession with twisted forms and ornamentation. By folding the body in various ways and in different sequences, an unusual vocabulary of movement is created, recalling both classical as well as grotesque imagery. Performed almost entirely with the back to the audience, the performers body rather than face becomes the main carrier of expression. Excecuted with precision and control, the piece is a short excercise in virtuosity.

Chorographed & Performed by Ula Sickle | Sound design Peter Lenaerts [‘aisikl] | Video Ula Sickle & Peter Lenaerts | Created while at PARTS Performing Arts Research and Training Studios

Photo: Peter Lenaerts