Kirsi Monni's Montreal lecture

"In Ula Sickle's work Solid Gold, we don’t see an entertaining black guy dancing to the music. Instead we hear his breath and feel his footsteps, which dance around the cultural and colonial history of black Africans. The intense presence of the dancer prohibits the audiences’ immersion in an entertaining flow of dancing, thus making visible the dance as a consciously choreographed act, a collection of socio-cultural gestures indicating the economic and political ideologies that lie underneath. From this work I read references to social dancing as well as to the entertainment industry, to undocumented personal histories as well as to collective histories of colonialism and the African Diaspora. What touches me here is the simplicity of the presentation, which allows me to closely perceive the dancing as an embodied thinking of one’s cultural and political heritage. "

Kirsi Monni from "What Kinds of Ideas Are Guiding Choreographic Work? - conceptualising choreography since 1960s"

The full article can be downloaded here :
(highly recommended!)
www.tangente.qc.ca

Solid Gold: A review @ Indyish.com

by Sylvian Verstricht

"No fanfare at Tangente this week. Fuck being submerged in a dark room, fuck seductive melodious music, fuck the ceremony that is usually the dance show. All that’s left of it is for us to walk in the room and sit in a chair, waiting for something to happen. The bright stage lights are already on and they don’t go down before Dinozord (dancer Patrick Mbungu) walks over to centre stage from the audience. No big costume either: a grey t-shirt, exercise pants, and sneakers.

Appropriate for the second week (of three) of Tangente’s Idea-Based Dances program, inspired by two movements with similar roots. The first emerged during the 60s with the Judson Dance Theater in New York City, which marked the beginnings of post-modern dance. Their source of inspiration: conceptual art. The second arose in France in the mid-90s with a new generation of choreographers that abandoned movement to integrate other art forms into their practice, thereby creating “non-dance.”

But Dinozord definitely dances in Ula Sickle’s Solid Gold. In fact, he covers the entire spectrum of dance from the African diaspora, from its roots to street dance styles performed in Congo today, passing through 20s Harlem, Broadway, the New York street dance scene of the 70s and 80s, and the more recent styles coming out of Los Angeles, like Krump. All of this in 30 minutes.

What makes this dance history lesson that much more compelling, however, is Sickle’s sound choice: no pop music. In fact, no music at all, in the strictest sense of the term. Again, very much in keeping with the practices of the Judson Dance Theater. Instead, what we get is the amplified sound from four microphones taped to the floor all around the stage, and (as we discover later) one right underneath Dinozord’s nostrils. His breath first sounds like a pen scribbling on a piece of paper. It is his, yet disembodied, marking the presence of two entities onstage: the physical and the electronic bodies.

We also hear his footsteps. Everything about Solid Gold highlights its own being. Like much of the work that emerged from Judson, it does not attempt to stand for something other than itself; it is what it is. As Dinozord’s breathing becomes heavier as his body proportionally drips with sweat, it becomes clear that Solid Gold is about its own physicality rather than an attempt to seduce us with pleasing aesthetics. If the body is anything other than itself, it is (as many of the dances displayed here prove) a political tool . .

Full Article:

http://www.indyish.com/solid-gold-a-review/

Solid Gold: Review @ mouVoir

par Cathy De Plée

"Magnifique solo de la chorégraphe Ula Sickle et son interprète Dinozord"

Tracer l'histoire de la danse hip hop sur le corps d'un danseur, en remontant jusqu'à ses origines dans la danse africaine voilà le défit qu'à relevé magistralement la chorégraphe Ula Sickle avec son interprète Dinozord dans Solid Gold. Ce solo s'intégrait toujours dans la série idéodanse de Tangente. En danse (en arts) l'intention est une chose. L'incarner en est une autre. Or force est de constater qu'ici, rien ne s'est perdu en chemin. Au contraire. L'idée de la chorégraphe s'est comme épanouie au contact de l'énergie et de l'intelligence corporelle de son interprète. Dinozord, danseur contemporain d'origine congolaise porte en lui, comme tout danseur, une histoire corporelle faite de plusieurs couches superposée. Elle sont ici dévoilées tour à tour . .

Article complet a lire sur le blog:

http://mouvoir.blogspot.com/

Solid Gold / Upcoming

SOLID GOLD

In collaboration with Dinozord & Yann Leguay

This work-in-progress is being created in several stages thanks to residencies from: Pianofabriek Kunstenwerkplaats, Les Bains Connectives, KVS (Brussels) & Tangente (Montreal) With financial support from: VGC, Office franco-quebecois de la jeunesse, Canada Council for the Arts. Special thanks: Studio Kabako.

Try-outs:

March 18th & 19th @ 5pm - Pianofabriek
Fortstraat 35 1060 Sint-Gillis, Brussel

March 4th - 6th @ 7:30pm & 7th @ 4pm - Tangente
840 Rue Cherrier, Montreal

April 14th @ 8:30pm - KVS
Arduinkaai 9, 1000 Brussel

Created with and performed by Dinozord, a young contemporary dancer from Kinshasa, Solid Gold traces the roots of Hip Hop, from traditional African dance to forms of entertainment dance from Broadway and Hollywood to MTV. As the solo moves from one hit dance style to the next, and from one epoch to another, the amplified steps of one dance become the sound score for the next. Gradually the dancers movement becomes a musical score providing the impulse for the next groove.

Inspired by the 1979 American television show of the same name, where the previous year’s musical hits were performed in playback by a chorus of dancers, as well as by the film ìSoul Powerî on James’s Brown’s visit to the Zaire during the reign of Mobutu, Solid Gold also refers to the exploitation of the Congo's natural resources, and to its true and often overlooked resource; the energy, determination and creativity of its youth.

Concept: Ula Sickle / Created with and performed by Dinozord / Sound concept & design: Yann Leguay / Production: Rebecca September / Management: Caravanproductions for Rebecca September vzw

Viewmaster in rekto : verso

Kijken is de Kunst
Wouter Hillaert
 / redactioneel

Abstracte, hedendaagse dans als een bezwerende, bijna hallucinatorische trip, waar je je ogen bij uitwrijft? Het kan. Zo’n ervaring bood deze zomer de installatie Viewmaster op Theater Aan Zee. Het Brusselse trio Heike Langsdorf, Ula Sickle en Laurent Liefooghe bouwde een simpele triplex box met twee kamers die in een rechte hoek op elkaar aansluiten. Een schuin spiegelglas scheidt beide kamers, volgens de principes van de negentiende-eeuwse machine ‘Pepper’s ghost illusion’. Met wisselende belichtingen kun je het publiek, dat via een centraal raam de box inkijkt, de illusie geven dat er twee dansers, elk in hun eigen kamertje, op dezelfde plek dooreenvloeien als geesten, als in een live videoclip. Het zorgde voor een van de hoogst denkbare artistieke ervaringen. Je ogen bij de neus genomen.

Zo zijn er twee soorten kunst die ingrijpen op het kijken zelf. Er is kunst die het erbij moet zeggen dat ze je kijk verandert. En er is kunst die dat gewoon doet, voor iedereen met twee ogen. Creaties à la Viewmaster of beeldend werk als dat van Escher of Magritte gaan naar de essentie van kunst. Ze bevragen heel concreet de objectieve blik waarmee we naar de wereld menen te kijken. Ze vertrekken daarbij niet van voorkennis, maar van de simpele gelijkheid tussen ziende mensen. In die zin bespelen ze ook de essentie van wat een ‘publiek’ is: aanschouwers, viewers . . .

rekto : verso
(for full article)

Viewmaster @ Theater Aan Zee

Viewmaster opened at TAZ / Theater Aan Zee, Oostende 03/08 - 07/08 2009, with 10 performances over 5 days @ the Stadshuis in the city center. An Article about Viewmaster appeared in deMorgen, weekend-edition Aug 1st.

Viewmaster @ Teatr Nowy