Noli Timere, premiere 2025
“NOLI TIMERE is a beautiful, stirring piece... Be prepared for the threads of your mind to unravel amidst the chaos and freedom of the net...a multidisciplinary marvel of magic, majesty, and miraculous moments.”
Elizabeth Hane - The Scholar’s Take
Photos: Marie-Andrée Lemire
“I believe people can have a profound experience by being surrounded by something beautiful—that’s what I aim for. My sculpture is about the way you feel when you’re standing under it and inside it. It’s experiential art.” - Janet Echelman
Director and Choreographer: Rebecca Lazier
Sculpture Designer: Janet Echelman and Studio Echelman
Composer: Jorane
Lighting Designer: Leigh Ann Vardy
Costume Designer: Mary Jo Mecca
Rigging: Dominic Clement, Rosaleen Rogmans, James Leonard
Arts Strategist and Dramaturg: Tonya Lockyer
Engineering Consultants: Sigrid Adriaenssens and William Baker
Performers: Joaquin Barral, Zed Cezard, Clark Griffin, Valmont Harnois, Bia Pantojo, Raphaëlle Renucci, Gillian Seaward-Boone, and Madi Ward.
Project Manager: Gillian Seaward-Boone
Producer/Tour Manager: Gregg Parks, Y2D Productions
For Inquiries and Bookings Contact:
Laurelle Favreau/GAMI SIMONDS: laurelle@gamisimonds.com
“Lazier's NOLI TIMERE is stunning… It’s playful; it's creative; it's scary to watch; it's life in action.” - Lydia Sbityakov, Triangle Review
NOLI TIMERE is a soaring aerial performance where multidisciplinary performers move under, over, and within a voluminous net sculpture, suspended up to 25 feet in the air. Conceived by Guggenheim Fellowship Award-winning choreographer Rebecca Lazier in partnership with world-renowned sculptor Janet Echelman, NOLI TIMERE dissolves the boundary between choreography and sculpture, creating a shared system in which movement and structure continuously transform one another. With original music by acclaimed Québécois composer Jorane, NOLI TIMERE brings together contemporary dance, avant-garde circus, large-scale art installation, and advanced engineering to reflect on how we navigate an unstable world.
The culmination of a 5-year collaboration, NOLI TIMERE, Latin for "be not afraid," renders interconnectedness visible and tangible, demonstrating – like the “butterfly effect” – how a change in one element generates cascading effects throughout an entire system. The visual design incorporates two 40 x 30-foot net sculptures suspended by a dynamic rigging system. As performers dance, fly and fall, the smallest shifts reverberate across the whole, offering a visceral demonstration of collective responsibility: how individual actions ripple outward, how trust enables flight, and how fragile beauty depends on care.
Designed for indoor and outdoor venues, NOLI TIMERE is a full-length performance that can be accompanied by Relaxed Performances (sensory friendly) performances and community programming, including workshops that make the nets environment accessible to all. The sculpture may also remain on view before and after performances, extending the work’s impact as a contemplative public artwork.
At once intimate and expansive, NOLI TIMERE invites audiences to experience connection—human and ecological—through a living installation where resilience, adaptability, and shared capacity are felt in the body.
Engagement
Our engagement goals extend beyond presenting singular performances to offering diverse, community-centered experiences that invite audiences to interact directly with the nets. Grounded in the collaborative processes that shaped NOLI TIMERE, these programs encourage reflection on navigating uncertainty, recognizing the environmental impact of individual and collective actions, and cultivating care and interdependence.
Engagement Activities
Relaxed (sensory-friendly) performances
On-net workshops for all populations
Dance-based workshops cultivating embodied connection with the “dancing net”
Accessibility workshops enabling participants with disabilities to explore teamwork and connection on the nets
Sculpture exhibited outside performance, transforming the environment into a space for gathering, rest, and mindfulness
Lectures and keynote demonstrations on net mechanics, design principles, and the six-year interdisciplinary creation process.
Selected Examples of Research and Residencies
Interweave Festival (NC State): Week-long residency including on-net workshops, roundtable conversations, lightning research talks, open rehearsals, and a concurrent Janet Echelman exhibition at the Gregg Museum.
NODES — Net tOpologies and Dance Explorations, Princeton University: Research collaboration with engineer Sigrid Adriaenssens examining how nets rigidify and soften under shifting forces; findings shared through a video installation at McCarter Theatre.
University of Washington, Barry Onouye Endowed Studio: Graduate architecture students explored tensile structures and dance through a collaborative net-based performance.
“Delicate dance, sublime sculpture, ethereal score. In this very fragile world of ours, it was a privilege and a salve to be a witness.”
Juliana Ochs Dweck, Chief Curator, Princeton University Art Museum
“Brilliant NOLI TIMERE – elegant and fluid yet uncompromising in its complexity. An urgent, and enduring work that speaks to us so bracingly now but also resonates beyond these difficult times.”
Judith Hamera, Lewis Center for the Arts
“An extraordinary production quite unlike anything we had ever experienced… Rebecca Lazier created a masterful composition with Noli Timere.” Debra C Argen & Edward F Nesta, Luxury Experience
“A synthesis of vibrant sculpture, gravity-defying dance, and riveting music, the breathtaking Noli Timere is a collision of art forms like no other.” Jade Valadakis, William and Mary Newspaper
Photos: Marie-Andrée Lemire, Julie Lemberger and Janet Echelman
Current Funding: Noli Timere is made possible by the New England Foundation for the Arts' National Dance Project, with lead funding from the Doris Duke Foundation and The Mellon Foundation; the Guggenheim Foundation; Canada’s National Arts Centre’s National Creation Fund; Princeton University’s Lewis Center for the Arts, the Innovation Fund for Collaborations in Arts and Sciences and the Humanities Council’s Fund for Canadian Studies; and the The Canada Council for The Arts. Noli Timere was further developed during a four-week residency at PS21, the Center for Contemporary Performance.
Commissioning Support: Live Art Dance, Halifax and Princeton University.
Development support and residencies provided by Mocean Dance and Breaking Circus with support from Arts Nova Scotia and Nova Scotia Department of Communities, Culture and Heritage. Additional support provided by the University of Washington School of Architecture and Princeton’s Atelier Program, Council on Science and Technology, and Dean of Research.
Thank you to all the participants of courses and workshops who have contributed to the ever evolving practice and process of creating and thinking through this work:
At the University of Washington: Students: Adam Bichir, Juan Granados Borreguero, Elena Cortez, Elana Darnell, Mark Delpierre, Yuting Feng, Jess Kuntz, Steffen Pawlosky, Nick Portman, Kristin Ramsey, Anton Sagun, Daniel Vu, Lorryn Wilhelm, Zixiao Zhu. Performers: Rachel Lincoln, Christopher Ralph, Brian Lawson, Cori Kresge
Princeton University Students: Michelle Baird, Sofia Bisogno, Sophie Blue, Heather Cho, Young Joo Choi, Claire Yinzki Dong, Leah Emanuel, Leila Grant, Samantha Greyson, Abigail Hack, Jhor van de Horst, Sarah Hultman, Preeti Iyer, Nitish Jindal, Lauren Johnston, Jorina Kardhashi, Lyra Katzman, Serena Lu, Sydney Maple, Melanie McCloy, Vanessa Moore, An-Ya Olson, Melita Piercy, Dominic Saunders, Jack Shigeta, Allison Spann, Elizabeth Wallace, Audrey Yan
Artists in Halifax, Nova Scotia: Meredith Kalaman, Jessica Lowe, Lou Blanchette, Jacinte Armstrong, Dylan Brentwood, Madelaine Higgins, Genevieve Grady, Leah Skerry, Anastasia Wiebe, Aiyana Graham, Kastin Bradley, Nathalie Thibert, April Hubbard, Stephanie Mitro, Kyle Scott, Susanne Chui, Alexis Milligan, Dawn Shepherd, Lydia Zimmer.