Noli Timere, Performance Installation (In Progress)
DESCRIPTION
Noli Timere is a soaring off-ground multinational dance and performance installation, performed within, on, under, around—and created simultaneously with—a voluminous Janet Echelman net sculpture. Activated and transformed by six-nine outstanding performers, the work is a synthesis of experimental dance, avant-garde circus, engineering, art installation, music, public sculpture and social practice. The project brings together Echelman’s awe-inspiring sculptures, often sculpted at the scale of buildings and city blocks, with the human story of the creative team’s personal connections to the oceans and environment.
To lead the creation of Noli Timere, Lazier draws on decades of experience bringing together artists and thinkers with divergent practices, values and aesthetics. Echelman is celebrated for reshaping airspace with vast, moving sculpture that reacts to the environmental forces around it transforming from an object you look at, into an experience you can get lost in. Noli Timere is the first time performers will move upon and within Echelman’s suspended sculpture, bringing the dancers as high as 25 feet off the floor.
How do we find a way to move through an unstable world? How do we navigate change? Is there an ethos for living in precarity? These questions guide the creation of Noli Timere and speak directly to our current global moment. During a time of unprecedented uncertainty, Noli Timere revels in our interconnectivity and resilience.
When audiences first approach Noli Timere they will encounter a monumental, fluid, sculpture of three layered, effervescently colored nets rising above their heads and cascading to the ground. The sculpture provides 30x45 feet of air and ground performance area. Through the dancers’ movements and the lighting design of multi-award-winning Canadian designer Leigh Ann Vardy, the nets change dramatically over the course of the performance, establishing sculpture and performance as equal partners.
This performance and installation are available as indoor or outdoor events. The performance is a single 60-minute event. Between performances, the net sculpture can be activated as a civic gathering site for companion engagement programming.
CREDITS
Conception: Janet Echelman and Rebecca Lazier
Director and Choreographer: Rebecca Lazier
Sculpture Designer: Janet Echelman, Daniel Smith, Adam Burke, and Keith Hartwig
Performers and Co-Creators: Joaquin Barral, Zed Cezard, Valmont Harnois, Bia Pantojo, Raphael Renucci, Gillian Seaward-Boone, Leah Skerry, and Madi Ward
Lighting Designer: Leigh Ann Vardy
Costume Designer: Marilène Bastien
Rigging: James Leonard
Arts Strategist and Dramaturg: Tonya Lockyer
Engineering Consultants: Sigrid Adriaenssens and William Baker
Project Manager: Gillian Seaward-Boone
For Inquiries and Bookings Contact: Gregg Parks, gregg@y2d-shows.com
Photos: Marie-Andrée Lemire