May 1 & 2

The furiously fast footwork of Pantsula, a South African percussive street dance style, is juxtaposed with soaring Pentecostal “praise breaks” when the six members of Johannesburg-based Impilo Mapantsula make their U.S. Debut in The Ecstatic. This internationally-acclaimed collaboration with Basel-based choreographer Jeremy Nedd is a high-octane celebration of the youth-driven culture of Pantsula, which is rooted in high-speed virtuosic footwork but has also given rise to its own lifestyle, language, music, and fashion. In the final days of Apartheid, the movement gave a voice to a whole generation.

The praise break in Pentecostal services is a pause — a break in the church service, where the dancing body, voice, and music energetically coalesce and start to blur the difference between ecstatic and cathartic. As the artists ask themselves what happens when these two worlds converge –  what happens in this transcendental moment of “break” – they discover and “break open” a new space all their own.