Ula
Sickle
© Laurent Paillier

Jolie

Text / Press / Video / PDF



Ula Sickle, Jolie Ngemi & Yann Leguay
Performance: 25 min (2011)


Created with and for Congolese dancer Jolie Ngemi, this short and powerful solo starts in the present tense while looking towards the future: popular Congolese dances sampled from music videos and local night clubs are taken up, repeated and transformed. Confronting the codes of contemporary western dance, Jolie goes in search of a contemporary dance form that she can call her own. Taking the audience with her on this journey, she adopts the role of the Atalaku, or MC, who in Congolese music urges the dancers and those in the crowd to move. Her voice, sampled and transformed through a live interaction with French musician Yann Leguay, becomes the music that accompanies her, entering into resonance with her movement. 


Jolie is part of a double bill together with Solid Gold, a solo created for and with Congolese dancer Dinozord.



Concept: Ula Sickle / Created with & performed by Jolie Ngemi / Sound concept & design: Yann Leguay / Sound programming: Sylvain Lebeux / Light design: Ula Sickle & Peter Fol / Production: Caravan Production for Rebecca September vzw / Co-production: Rencontres chorégraphiques internationales Seine-Saint-Denis (FR), Kaaitheater (Brussels, BE), KVS(Brussels, BE), B:OM Festival (Seoul, KR) with the support of the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism and the Korea Arts Management Service / Residencies: KVS & Centre Wallonie-Bruxelles (Kinshasa DRC), Seoul Arts Space - Mullae (Seoul KR), Kaaitheater (Brussels BE), Kunstenwerkplaats Pianofabriek (Brussels BE)


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Première: 5th & 6th May, 2011 - Rencontres chorégraphiques internationales de Seine-Saint-Denis (FR), w/ Solid Gold: June 9th & 10th, 2011 - Kaaitheater Studios, Brussels (BE), July 21st, 2011 - Platform Contemporain des Arts de la Scene, Institut Francais & KVS, Kinshasa (DRC), February 24, 2012 - Stadsschowburg Brugge (BE), March 17th & 18th - TanzQuartier Vienna (AT), October 20th & 21st, 2012 Nowy Teatr Warsaw (PL), etc. see tour dates.


Both, “Jolie” and “Solid Gold”, are attempts to interrogate the conditions of our perception of the body, which define if we are able to apprehend a body in its movements as powerful and present or as dependent and precarious. These questions are formulated by means of postmodern dance. But they are also enlarged by a precise rethinking of contemporary issues of concern regarding the way bodies are increasingly colonized by digitalized, connected and globalized power structures. The performances call for a continued negotiation of these questions and remain a request for further consideration of body politics, precariousness and the social belonging of a body in contemporary dance.

Ana Hoffner - "Politicizing Contemporary Dance"