Rehearsal (2025)

Rehearsal, 2025 

Film, 25’ 

Drawn from the rehearsal process of Holding Present with Ictus ensemble, Rehearsal (2025), is the second part of a two-part video work. Taking as a starting point Franco 'Bifo' Berardi's notion of protest as a poetic reactivation of the social body, the work examines how breath, rhythm and gesture can function as catalysts for collective action. Filmed at the Rosas Performance Space and in Bozar’s Horta Hall in the days leading up to the performance, the video turns its attention to the relational. The footage was realised by embedding steadicam operator, Stanislav Dobák, within the rehearsal, staying as close as possible to the dancers’ movements. It traces the transition from rehearsal to performance, making palpable the sociability among the performers and the role of language in transmitting gestures—many of which are drawn from protest contexts, such as the hand signals developed during the Occupy movement.

The work refuses to reduce the rehearsal to mere preparation, instead presenting it as an ongoing negotiation, shifting between precision and improvisation. As the piece progresses, music propels the performers into a group action, amplifying the movements that bind them together. In an era when collective presence is at once commodified and under threat, Sickle’s work asserts the radical potential of movement—not as spectacle, but as a tool for reconfiguring social relations in real time. As is often the case in her practice, Rehearsal positions liveness as a practice of mutual recognition, a process of becoming-with others.