Jeremy Nedd / Impilo Mapantsula

With THE ECSTATIC, Jeremy Nedd and Impilo Mapantsula brought the dance of the South African subculture Pantsula to international stages, earning standing ovations and invitations all over Europe. Pantsula is not simply dance, but an urban lifestyle and form of expression that emerged in the Black townships during apartheid. With virtuoso footwork and fashionable cool, it still expressively comments on South African conditions. Jeremy Nedd’s brand new work now explores the Western, Hollywood’s most whitewashed genre (movie special). The US-American, Basel-based choreographer and Impilo Mapantsula relate the Western’s iconography of the white hero and the supposedly wild West to the history of South Africa, its land reforms and property relations, and cover it with the rich Pantsula culture (dramaturgy: Anta Helena Recke). At a time when stars like Little Nas X or Solange reinscribe the Black Cowboy into pop culture, HOW A FALLING STAR LIT UP THE PURPLE SKY... expands it with perspectives from the global South in an energetic choreography that will shake up the Kampnagel stage.