The pantsula is an extremely dynamic dance form that emerged in South African townships during the apartheid era. A new culture rapidly developed around the extremely rapid, skillful sequences of steps featuring a variety of complex micro-rhythms. In The Ecstatic, Impilo Mapantsula, a South African organisation supporting the legacy of the pantsula, links it to another dance tradition that was a feature when American choreographer Jeremy Nedd was growing up: the praise break. This is a type of praise that is the climax in Afro-American Pentecostal church services and exuberantly combines dancing, voices and music to the point of blurring the diff erence between the ecstatic and the cathartic. Playing with curtains in the stage design The Ecstatic evokes church architecture and stresses the literal meaning of “break”. Time is suspended during which six dancers combine the aesthetics of the pantsula and praise break, exploring the movements leading up to the latter in order to discover a new space of their own.

See also : Free School, A Dance School & Kids
 

Confronted with the SARS-CoV-2 crisis, we had to cancel this project