Jersey Arts Podcast · ArtPride New Jersey

Dancing through the Air: 'Noli Timere' Marks World Premiere at McCarter Theater

·28 min·1 clip

"Noli Timere" means "Be Not Afraid," and the piece puts eight performers dancing up to 25 feet in the air.

1. Jersey Arts Podcast covers the world premiere of Noli Timere, the collaboration between Rebecca Legere and Janet Echelman. 2. Host Gina Marie Rodriguez interviews Rebecca Legere, a Princeton University professor and choreographer, and Janet Echelman, a sculptor known for building-scale net works. 3. The episode asks what happens when dance, sculpture, engineering, and circus are built into one aerial performance. 4. Legere says the piece began at a 2018 Princeton conference on the intersection of arts and engineering, where Echelman was the keynote speaker. 5. Echelman says she had long imagined humans dancing in her nets, but this is the first time she has designed a figure for people inside the net. 6. Legere describes choreography built around weight, ripple, and unpredictability, where one dancer’s shift changes the whole system. 7. Echelman connects the title Noli Timere, or "Be Not Afraid," to precarity and to the feeling that even the ground beneath people is no longer stable. 8. The performers work up to 25 feet in the air and come from dance, experimental movement, aerial forms, and some Cirque du Soleil experience. 9. The sculpture itself uses two nets, described as "pockets" or "pillows," with four soft layers and a volumetric airspace between them. 10. Legere says the net sculpture changes during the performance because pulleys can lift or lower the layers and alter the shape. 11. Echelman says the piece can be read as clouds, spheres of being, Dante’s inferno, or images of ocean, earth, and sky. 12. Both artists stress that the work is open to children, adults, and audiences without prior dance or circus experience. 13. The episode notes a relaxed performance on Saturday at 2 p.m. for a neurodiverse audience, with permission to come and go. 14. Legere explains that the music came from French Canadian composer Joran, a cellist, vocalist, and electronics artist. 15. She says Joran added a "heartbeat" and a second layer to the work after Legere had used temporary sound scores by composers including Caroline Shaw and Tony Braxton. 16. The collaboration also involved Sigrid Andriesen, engineer Bill Baker, a mathematician textile geometrist, riggers, and dancers measuring how forces move through the nets. 17. Legere and Echelman describe collaboration as relationship, discovery, and vulnerability, not just a professional label. 18. The conversation is informal and detailed, with Gina Marie Rodriguez asking direct questions about rehearsal, engineering, music, and audience access. 19. Listeners interested in dance, sculpture, engineering, or aerial performance will get the most from this episode. 20. Listeners who want a brief arts-news update without process details may skip it.

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