blue nile to the galaxy around olodumare

Working with Impilo Mapantsula, a group operating out of South Africa, is a privilege, says US-American Jeremy Nedd. Now in their fifth year of an internationally acclaimed, Black-Atlantic search for shared Afro-diasporic moments in which music and movement find virtuosic climaxes, they present “blue nile to the galaxy around olodumare.” The title of the new piece refers to two compositions by Alice Coltrane. The music of Bheki Mseleku, who like many internationally successful South African musicians has had to work in the diaspora, is the second pillar of the new production.  

The dancer and choreographer, who grew up in Brooklyn and now lives in Switzerland, builds a bridge from jazz as an expression of African American self-determination to the South African subculture Pantsula, which grew out of resistance to apartheid policies. Music and improvisational movement become a choreographic model capable of translating specific memories into the present. Alice Coltrane, the story goes, once gave Bheki Mseleku in Newport the saxophone mouthpiece with which John Coltrane had recorded “A Love Supreme.” Passing the baton from the past into the future, Jeremy Nedd and Impilo Mapantsula, with a rich dance language drawn from the highly rhythmic Pantsula vocabulary and references to Black dance and theater since the 1970s, create a wide-eyed evening of dance that arcs widely and inspires in the now.

In co-operation with the Festspielhaus St. Pölten.