Kochi | Rima Kallingal’s Neythe - Dance of the Weaves debuts

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

Actor-dancer 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 35-minute Indian contemporary dance production, which will debut this Saturday, 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 of 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.

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, COVID-19 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.”