Rima Kallingal’s sees eight dancers immersing themselves in the staccato of weaving, as an ode to Chendamangalam

Neythe

ctordancer Rima Kallingal is in her element when we meet at the Fine Arts Hall in Kochi, Kerala. She is “happily tired” for she and seven members from her dance company, Mamangam, have been practising daily for the past two months for their maiden show, Neythe — Dance of the Weaves.

The 35minute Indian contemporary dance production, which debuted yesterday, is an ode to weaving and the handloom weavers of Chendamangalam. The small town, which is one of Kerala’s handloom hubs, was among the worst hit by the flood of 2018. Looms and livelihoods were lost as were the fabric stocks prepared for that year’s Onam.

The destruction led to a movement by designers, entrepreneurs, actors, and regular people to help rebuild the artisans’ lives. “It got me thinking about weavers, their craft and their livelihood,” says Kallingal, 39, who collaborated with Save the Loom, a nonprofit that works with handloom weavers. What she saw in 2018 stayed with her.

Then, during the pandemic downtime, Kallingal recalls coming across content created by an African dancer, who documented the dance forms

Aof her region. “It was a tribute to the local artists and dances that nobody knew of,” she says, adding that it was where everything began.

Weavers’ body language

At first, she teamed up with photographer Ajay Menon, who was equally fascinated with Chendamangalam. They planned an NFT series of eight videos, shot by Menon, each dedicated to a weaving process. However, by the time they finished it, COVID19 restrictions were lifted, life got busy, and it was put on the back burner.

When they revisited the idea this year, Kallingal felt that “since people were stepping out to theatres and events, we shouldn’t just release the videos”. It needed a different approach. She assigned a process each to her dancers —from washing and dyeing to spinning and weaving — to come up with a “visceral” movement linked to their favoured dance style.

It meant paying attention to the nuances of the weavers’ body language and their interactions with each other. “We have brought in the pauses, the eye contact, when they laugh at, or with, each other,” says the trained classical dancer. “They are not bothered by what they do with their bodies when they work. It is normal for them. But as artists, looking at it from outside, we were enamoured.”

Once the dancers completed their assignment, they had a suggestion: to convert it into a stage production. And Neythe was born. The production follows the progression of Sarojini Naidu’s poem, Indian Weavers, from birth to death.

The choreography, Kallingal confesses, has been “quite a process”. “There are no myths or metaphors [in it], just raw life. The people inspired us,” she says. “That is what contemporary dance does. It forces you to look at life as it is, and you imbibe the energy of what you see to create movement from it. We are the weavers, the yarn and the machine, the loom and the warpwinding machine.” The video series has been integrated into it too, to make it a “multimedia production”.

When I use words, people get it wrong. So, maybe I should use art. In the process, I can entertain people. This way works better

RIMA KALLINGAL

Work in progress

But amid the excitement of the debut, she confesses to moments of confusion, of succumbing to imposter syndrome. “I have woken up these last few days, wanting to shut off social media. I see children suffering in Gaza... and I am doing a production about weaving. I couldn’t help focuses and high points of his journey so far.”

The Crowd comes to Bikaner

The

Foundation for Contemporary Culture (Mumbai), the National Centre for the Performing Arts (NCPA, Mumbai), and various embassies. She also plans to take it to New York in 2024, for the Erasing Borders Dance Festival.

Her appetite for creating now whetted, Kallingal wants to do more. An outspoken, sociallyaware artiste, and one of the founders of the Women in Cinema Collective, she has advocated for an Internal Complaints Committee in cinema to ensure the safety of women, gender discrimination (in films and elsewhere), and more. She says, “When I use words, people get it wrong. So, maybe I should use art. In the process, I can entertain people. This way works better!”

Kallingal and her dancers put together on that he is — is on exhibit. “It’s an inviting crowd, unlike one without a brain,” he says. “This crowd is a fearless one. Everybody is on a ramp, one leg is always up, wanting to be elevated from where they are. There is a liminality there, reaching out to a space that we want to explore intellectually and emotionally.”

‘People fascinate me’

Commenting on the art market today, Kumar says it has become far more friendly than it was for artists such as Ramkinkar Baij. “The lack of finances not only deterred artists like Ramkinkar from casting, but also from undertaking many large projects that he wanted to do,” he points out, while Radhakrishnan adds that he only accepts patrons who value his creative freedom. “If a patron wants to support what I do, I don’t mind. But if a patron wants to support me to do something that they want to do, then I am not for them.”

His next works will see Radhakrishnan experimenting with different sizes, but one thing will remain constant. “I only work with people,” he stresses. “[None of my work is] abstract sculptures. I deal with real people. They continue to fascinate me.”

The exhibition by Gallerie Nvyā opens today and is on till December 14 at Bikaner House.

The writer is a theatre artiste based in Thrissur.