When a stage has more cables and pulleys than a factory floor, you suspect this will be one of those raw performances best presented in a garage. Instead, dancer Julie Nioche took Kamani Auditorium on a meditative journey on Tuesday as she presented Nos Solitude or Our Solitude as part of DanSe DialogueS, an Indo-French festival of contemporary dance. More than 80 weights were suspended from cables and, as the guitar droned, Nioche hooked herself to these by her hands, shoulders, waist and feet. Looking like a puppet, she began to move her body — sometimes jerky, sometimes smooth and always strong — in an attempt to rise to the top. The weights rose and fell with her every action, as a metaphor for the eternal human desire to touch the zenith and overcome the dead weights that pull us down. Once, when she had made it to the top, Nioche fell back to the floor. The piece reached out to the audience in deeply personal ways — evident from the crowd that surrounded the dancer after the show. Excerpts from an interview with Nioche: Rise of Machine I had dreamt about this piece, that I was in the air by myself with strings attached to me in such a way that, when I moved, some object would move in space. I worked with scenographer Virginie Mira and asked a technician specialising in cinema special effects to create a machine. People wonder how the weights and counterweights work and it fires their imagination. I like to leave the space and mystery for audiences to think about. Early Steps As a child, I was hyperactive and needed to do something with my energy so my mother put me into dance. Dance was the part of my life where I was free. I have continued to keep a small part of my life to be free. Dance and Science I am also interested in how the human machine works, the relationship between body, emotions, sensations and thoughts. To understand this, I dance, and I wanted more so I began to study psychology and osteopathy. This is not my first time in India, I had come on a grant from 2007 to 2009 to work on Kalari massage because I am a dancer and osteopath. I worked on the fact that Kalaripayattu martial arts practitioners have to be like doctors because they must know how to take care of injuries. I would like to continue this research.
