Special “Table of Silence Project” performance ritual of peace returns for sixth year to Josie Robertson Plaza (photo by Terri Gold)

Josie Robertson Plaza, Lincoln Center
65th St. between Broadway & Amsterdam Ave.
Sunday, September 11, free, 8:15 am
www.tableofsilence.org

Every September 11, there are many memorial programs held all over the city, paying tribute to those who were lost on that tragic day while also honoring New York’s endless resiliency. One of the most powerful is “The Table of Silence Project,” a public performance ritual for peace featuring one hundred dancers on Josie Robertson Plaza at Lincoln Center, now paying tribute to the fifteenth anniversary of the attacks. “The idea of a dance ritual came to me during my practice of meditation while drawing labyrinths. I realized that it could be beautiful to create a peace labyrinth, and Lincoln Center, where I often walk, was the obvious sacred space,” choreographer and artistic director Jacqulyn Buglisi explained on the event’s Kickstarter page. “It occurred to me that the architectural design of Josie Robertson Plaza would provide the environment to create concentric circles and, fused with the sacred geometry, manifest mandala energy for peace and harmony.” Beginning at 8:15 am, thirty-one minutes before the first plane hit the World Trade Center in 2001, dancers from Martha Graham, Juilliard, the Ailey School, the Dance Theatre of Harlem, the National Dance Institute, STEPS on Broadway, Broadway Dance Center, and other companies, all dressed in white, will slowly begin gathering around the Revson Fountain to a rhythmic drumbeat, followed by silence and then a soft score. Buglisi Dance Theatre partnered with the September Concert and Dance/NYC for the meditative event, which lasts about a half hour and can also be livestreamed here. “The future of humanity depends on what we do in the present,” Buglisi said about the project, which she conceived for the tenth anniversary of the terrorist attacks. Buglisi was inspired by Italian artist Rossella Vasta’s ever-evolving series of one hundred ceramic plates that help form the Table of Silence; as Vasta explained on her website, “One hundred is one times 100 and this refers to the original Latin meaning of religion that is derived from ‘religere.’ The dishes become the offering to humanity and represent transcendental values beyond any religion. Silence becomes a sacred space with no religious discrimination.”