By Robert Israel

If there is power in being invited, for the space of 80 minutes, to suspend our fear of where things are going, this show is a place where we can feel safe to do just that.

Noli Timere, by Rebecca Lazier and Janet Echelman, presented by ArtsEmerson at the Cutler Majestic Theatre, 219 Tremont St., Boston, MA, through February 1.

A scene from Noli Timere. Photo: Julie Lemberger

The multi-colored mesh suspended 25 feet above the Cutler Majestic’s stage may remind you, at first, of the geometric shapes you once saved on your computer, twirls and swirls in color enhanced cyber-space set against a black background. But, upon closer inspection, what you see on stage is not a computer-generated image, but a huge sculpture of braided fiber netting illuminated on all sides with colorful lights. The cocoon has the potential to become many things: a hammock, a mizzenmast rigging, a spider’s web. Or, because it is the scaffolding for a cast of eight performers, it could be the netting one sees positioned just above the sawdust at a circus, a canopy designed to catch aerialists should they miss their footing while traversing a tightrope high above.

This show – and I encourage you to make plans to see it quickly, because there are only a few performances left – gives the performers license to interact with this sculpture and each other, so that the webbing becomes all these things — or less, or more — depending on how willing you are to free yourself from the handrails of your imagination.

The title, Noli Timere, means “be not afraid” in Latin; it originated in the final text message that the late Nobel laureate poet Seamus Heaney wrote to his wife before he died. Since we are living in a most fearful time — each day brings new catastrophes  — the show is an invitation to confront images in which we may have mentally entangled; by watching performers wrestle and free themselves, we, too, can find a way to liberate ourselves from social, political, and emotional restraints that bind us.

The performers exhibit no fear. They tumble within the meshing, stretching limbs and torsos, hanging upside down like fruit bats, curling into the fetal position and then springing forth and momentarily defying gravity until they are caught, once again, in the netting. They communicate with one another wordlessly. The only sounds one hears in the auditorium are those of stagehands raising and lowering the rigging and the eerie music, provided by a performer named Jorane, who plays a cello and an instrument fashioned from metal bars that produces discordant, ethereal sounds reminiscent of a Gamelan gong. The unspoken sense of cooperation among the performers spills forth into the audience. I found myself thinking of the Imraguen people off the Atlantic coast of Mauritania, Africa, who set out their fishing nets and are aided by dolphins that herd schools of fish toward the shore. The music, engaging in a dreamy co-conspiracy with the performers, takes the place of the dolphins. We are lured into the mesh, too, but we are not trapped there. There is freedom to interact, to let the forces play with our minds, should we choose to surrender. We are also free to wait until the next moment of movement appears.

A scene from Noli Timere. Photo: Marie-Andree Lemire

I first learned of Echelman’s work when I saw her fluorescent sculpture on the Rose Kennedy Greenway over ten years ago. The piece generated whimsy and color in an unlikely place; an area of the city that is smothered in noise and congestion. As with the spell cast by Noli Timere, a viewer felt invited to linger beneath it and to marvel at how it commingled with the breezes from Boston Harbor and the exhaust from the Central Artery.

This stage work, however, is more accessible and emancipating. There is no unifying plot or device: the performers create tableaux that, to me, become athletic reveries one can choose to embrace or abandon. There is no message, just imagery. And, coming at a perilous time and at the head of a new year, Noli Timere offers welcome respite from fears that have already wreaked havoc and are encouraging an ever-widening, and dangerous, threat of loss and destruction.

If there is power in being invited, for the space of 80 minutes, to suspend our anxiety, this show is a place where we can feel safe to do just that.

Robert Israel, an Arts Fuse contributor since 2013, can be reached at risrael_97@yahoo.com.