«How a falling star lit up the purple sky» is the second joint production by Jeremy Nedd and nine pantsula dancers. Pantsula is a high-energy dance form which arose during the Apartheid era in South Africa’s Black townships, and which Nedd transposes into the contemporary stage context in this piece. Western movies were the speculative point of departure for new stories and myths for this project. As a genre, the western uses extremely clichéd narratives surrounding the hero, the «other» which is stylized into the stranger, and the wide, empty landscape they both inhabit and defend against each other. «How a falling star lit up the purple sky» tries to rethink the notion of these archetypes in an artistic and choreographic manner, as a visual poem and by combining different dance styles. The piece invites a paradigm shift and a reassessment of the mental and geographic spaces occupied by westerns, the (Wild) West and the South.

Jeremy Nedd is a choreographer and performer from Brooklyn, New York, who has been living and working in Basel for quite some time. He had various engagements at the Semper Opera in Dresden and at the Basel Ballet. He regularly makes guest appearances at the Zurich Theatre, where he has worked with Trajan Harrell. Most recently, he completed a master’s degree in expanded theatre at the Bern Academy of Arts (HKB). His works so far have incorporated dance styles of various communities within contemporary dance and have been shown at the Kaserne Basel, at the Arsenic – Centre d’Art scénique contemporain Lausanne and at the Münchner Kammerspiele, among others. Jeremy Nedd received the Swiss Performing Arts Award in 2023.

jeremynedd.com / moinmoinproductions.ch