There are things a body remembers long after the mind has stopped speaking about them. Like the weight of a wet sari, smell of cotton after rain or the feel of soil beneath fingernails. A body can carry a village, and a history.The eighth act of At the Still Point (ATSP), a community-funded dance platform that fosters important conversations through the work of contemporary artists, was themed Be.long.ing and held on July 31 and August 1 at Kolkata’s Urban Theatre Project and Goethe-Institut, Max Mueller Bhavan. The programme explored performance practices rooted in soil, sovereignty, Nature and community, featuring the Gram Art Project from Madhya Pradesh, and Manipuri artist Surjit Nongmeikapam. The two works presented this year, are Cotton Stainers, a performance by the women of the Gram Art Project collective , where they bring their own lives into the performance, and Fountain, where Manipuri contemporary dancer and performance artiste Surjit suspends himself mid air, turning the body into an unspeaking yet silently eloquent instrument of resistance.Two performances, two spectrumsGram Art Project’s performance is a collective testimony. Paramita Saha, curator and director, At the Still Point reads out what the women wish to say through their act, “We, the women, from the Gram Art Project Collective, are sharing our hopes, dreams, memories, secrets, burdens and stories of the brunt we have borne for being rural women of an average Indian village.”