The Kochi-Muziris Biennale recently hosted a very special event called “The Body as a Living Loom.” Held at the Bastion Bungalow, this session showed how the art of making cloth can be turned into a beautiful dance.
The project, called Neythe – Dance of the Weaves, was created by Rima Kallingal and the Mamangam Dance Company. It tells the story of weavers and their amazing craft.
Inspired by Real Heroes
The dance was inspired by the weavers of Chendamangalam. After the big Kerala floods in 2018, a group called Save The Loom helped these weavers start over.
Rima Kallingal and her team visited the weaving sheds to watch how the workers moved. They realized that the way a weaver works is like a quiet, steady dance. They wanted to show that hard work and rhythm to the world.
The Body as a Tool
In the lecture, the team explained how a dancer’s body can act just like a weaving machine. They looked at:
- The Rhythm: The heartbeat-like sound of the loom.
- The Patterns: How threads go over and under to make patterns.
- The Labor: The strength and focus it takes to make fabric by hand.
Choreographer Ashwin Gibin George and lighting designer Sreekanth Cameo joined Rima to talk about how they turned these movements into a stage show.
Photo courtesy: Kochi Biennale Foundation
A Performance to Remember
Later, the Mamangam Dance Company performed on stage. The dancers moved just like the tools in a weaving shed. They showed the whole journey of how a single piece of thread becomes a beautiful cloth.
Performances like Neythe help us understand how much work goes into the clothes we wear. By watching the dancers, the audience could see the “invisible” labor and the clever math that weavers use every day.
The dance was a way to say “thank you” to the weavers. It reminded everyone that even though machines make a lot of clothes today, the skill and heart of a human weaver are very special and should be protected.
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