The students of the Bachelor’s programme in Contemporary Dance at La Manufacture in Lausanne present an end-of-year performance worthy of the greatest European stages. Leading this programme are Jolie Ngemi — dancer, choreographer and musician, currently living between Lausanne and Kinshasa — and Jeremy Nedd.

Through her work, Jolie Ngemi develops a dialogue between contemporary aesthetics and her Congolese roots, building bridges between cultures and imaginaries.

Joining her is Jeremy Nedd, a choreographer originally from Brooklyn, New York, now based in Basel, Switzerland. Through his choreographic work, he addresses decoloniality and racism by drawing on street dance forms such as hip-hop and pantsula. Renowned for nurturing promising young artists, often with international backgrounds, La Manufacture promises a bold and committed evening.

Make The Curtain Burn
Choreography by Jolie Ngemi

Make The Curtain Burn expresses the decision and determination of this new generation to create its own way of life. Its own way of evolving and moving forward. The idea is to create their own world on stage — a modern world filled with solidarity, passion, mutual support, vulnerability, joy of living, humanity, and “no stress fuck discomfort.” This expression means putting an end to fears fuelled by the news, Google, and social media for the younger generation. An end to being told where they can or cannot go because of war, when reality is often far more nuanced.

Today, these young artists decide to burn down the curtain of abuses, unnecessary rules and laws in order to free themselves and open up to a new world — their own world — where they choose to create and surround themselves with love, joy, support, and collective progress. The movements will also embody the height of extreme joy, the desire to do well, and the ecstasy that follows liberation.

Faded future / future faded: A loop of social folk dance rituals
Choreography by Jeremy Nedd

Repetitions… Reiterations… Reconstructions… Returns… Replays… Repetitions… Revenue… Resources… Ruptures… Revenge… Reiterations… Replies… Repetitions… Reiterations… Reconstructions… Returns… Replays… Repetitions… Revenue… Resources… Ruptures… Revenge… Reiterations… Replies… loop

1. A form produced by a curve that folds back on itself and crosses itself.
2. A structure, series, or process whose end connects back to its beginning.
3. In music, a loop is a section of sound material that repeats. Short sections may be repeated to create ostinato patterns. Longer sections may also be repeated.

Starting from these definitions and the different interpretations, iterations, and spaces of understanding occupied by the “loop,” the piece physically and sonically explores the visible and invisible presence of this phenomenon, which is in many ways omnipresent in our everyday lives.

Jeremy Nedd

Jeremy Nedd, born in 1985, grew up in Brooklyn, New York. He is a dancer, choreographer, and sound designer. His collaborations with pantsula dancers from Johannesburg point towards a diverse and international mode of cooperation capable of establishing an egalitarian practice despite the colonial relationships that persist.

After completing his dance studies at SUNY Purchase College, he worked in New York with a range of choreographers, notably the African-American choreographer Kyle Abraham, whose work combines hip-hop, street dance, and modern dance. Since 2010, Jeremy Nedd has lived in Europe. He danced with the Semperoper in Dresden (2010–2012) and Ballet Theater Basel (2012–2016). Based in Basel, he also collaborates regularly with Schauspielhaus Zürich and Theater Neumarkt.

He received the New York Dance and Performance “Bessie” Award for his performance in The Radio Show by Kyle Abraham. In 2017, he was a finalist for PREMIO, a major Swiss performing arts encouragement award. He recently completed a Master’s degree in Expanded Theatre at the Bern University of the Arts (HKB).

Jeremy Nedd has performed works by William Forsythe, Jiří Kylián, Stephan Thoss, Alexander Ekman, among others. His own choreographies have already been presented in junior formats in Dresden and Basel. His recent productions blend styles from diverse horizons and have been shown in Switzerland at ROXY Birsfelden, Kaserne Basel, Tanzhaus Zürich, and Arsenic Lausanne, as well as internationally at venues such as the Münchner Kammerspiele in Munich, Sophiensaele in Berlin, and Palais de Tokyo in Paris.

Following the success of The Ecstatic (2019), the pantsula artists of Impilo Mapantsula collaborated once again with Jeremy Nedd on How a falling star lit up the purple sky (2023), a work exploring the western genre and rethinking the cliché of the hero. The Impilo Mapantsula network specialises in the heritage of pantsula, a South African urban dance and protest subculture known for its frantic footwork, through which an entire generation expressed itself during apartheid.

Jolie Ngemi

Jolie Ngemi is a contemporary and urban dance performer, choreographer, and musician.

In 2011, she collaborated with Ula Sickle and Yann Leguay on the solo Jolie, created in Seoul, South Korea, and subsequently toured in Belgium, France, the Netherlands, Poland, and Austria.

In 2012, she was invited to represent women artists at the New York Live Arts Festival.

In 2013, she began a two-year training programme at P.A.R.T.S. in Brussels. There, she was noticed by choreographer Boris Charmatz, with whom she created two productions: Danse de nuit — inspired by the Charlie Hebdo attacks — and 10,000 Gestures, both of which toured in France, Brussels, London, Germany, and Switzerland.

In 2018, she created her first solo work, Identity na ngayi, at La Bâtie – Festival de Genève. The performance was also presented in Basel, Brussels, and Utrecht.

In 2019, she created several performances and workshops in the Brussels region and at the Tictac Center. At the beginning of 2020, she joined the Amsterdam Academy as a teacher. That same year, she participated in Serge Aimé Coulibaly’s new creation Wakat.

She later founded her company AUC Production and the performing arts festival BOSANGANI, whose second edition took place in August 2022 in Kinshasa, bringing together European and African dancers through masterclasses, performances, and round-table discussions.