19:30—20:50 Public

Gessnerallee Zürich, Halle Ost

Jeremy Nedd & Impilo Mapantsula

How a falling star lit up the purple sky

© Phiilp Frowein / Charlotte Krieger

«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

Other productions available for touring

from rock to rock …aka how magnolia was taken for granite (2024), the ecstatic (2019)

Credits

Concept & choreography Jeremy Nedd

Choreography & performance Sicelo Xaba, Vusi Mdoyi, Sello Modiga, Thomas Motsapi, Bonakele Masethi, Lungile Ngwenya, Vuyani Feni, Sibongile Mathebula, Elma Motloenya

Light design / technical direction creation Thomas Giger

Light / technical direction touring Sebastian Sommer

Stage design Laura Knüsel

Audio design Fabrizio Di Salvo & Rej Deproc

Musical consulting Brandy Butler

Costume design Rosa Birkedal

Dramaturgy Anta Helena Recke

Production management creation Regula Schelling (produktionsDOCK)

Production / Diffusion Caroline Froelich (Moin Moin Productions)

Coproduction Kaserne Basel, Arsenic – Centre d'art scénique contemporain Lausanne, International Summer Festival Kampnagel, Wiesbaden Biennale, The Centre for the Less Good Idea Johannesburg

Supported by Fachausschuss Tanz & Theater BS/BL, Pro Helvetia – Swiss Arts Council, SüdKulturFonds, Stanley Thomas Johnson Stiftung, Kulturfonds of the Société Suisse des Auteurs (SSA), GGG Basel, Jacqueline Spengler Stiftung, Scheidegger-Thommen-Stiftung, Schweizerische Interpretenstiftung

Website www.jeremynedd.com / www.moinmoinproductions.ch

Venue

Gessnerallee Zürich, Halle Ost
Gessnerallee 8, 8001 Zürich
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Tickets

28.2.2024, 19:30—20:50
Gessnerallee Zürich, Halle Ost
29.2.2024, 15:00—16:20
Gessnerallee Zürich, Halle Ost