Show: Holding Present – Ictus + Ula Sickle
Presented in collaboration with Le Vivier as part of La Semaine du Neuf, a festival dedicated to new music, Holding Present brings together choreographer Ula Sickle and the Brussels-based contemporary music ensemble Ictus. Together, they create a performance where music and dance merge into a powerful collective gesture.
On stage, seven performers—three musicians and four dancers—share the same space, blurring the boundaries between bodies and instruments. The piece explores how an individual movement can transform into a collective act.
Inspired by protest movements past and present, Holding Present becomes a staged reflection on community: a space where shared presence, common rhythm, and mutual listening shape a form of collective action. Interweaving existing works and newly commissioned pieces by Alvin Lucier, Pauline Oliveros, Didem Coskunseven, and Stellan Veloce, the performance offers a different way of inhabiting the present together, with rare physical and symbolic intensity.
Ictus is one of Europe’s most important contemporary music ensembles.