MetLiveArts, in partnership with New York Live Arts, organised a unique, site-specific iteration of Taiwanese-American artist Lee Mingwei’s durational performance work OUR LABYRINTH, originally performed in 2015 at the Taipei Fine Arts Museum and subsequently at the Centre Pompidou in 2017.
For the 2020 performance, Lee Mingwei has invited legendary American dancer and choreographer Bill T. Jones to collaborate on a special version of Our Labyrinth specifically for New York City and The Met as a meditation on this moment of instability and profound change. The performance, with three separate parts on 16, 23 and 30 September 2020, was a live event for online audiences, streamed from three Met galleries while the Museum was closed.
Each performance features a single dancer – different each time – who uses a stylised broom to sweep a mound of rice along a labyrinthine path of their choosing. Performing this profoundly spiritual task, the dancer may encounter obstacles along the way but continues to navigate silently and mindfully.
Lee conceives of this project as a gift from the performers to the viewers, providing a “pure” space both physically and spiritually. Jones expresses his influence on the work, a respectful conversation with Lee across time and space, through the diverse cast of performers representing the spectrum of New York dance and performance, and in the sonic landscape provided by three experimental vocalists and musicians that echo through the galleries.
“I conceived OUR LABYRINTH as an embrace between creation and destruction. The current iteration, enriched and empowered by Bill’s gift, is an offering to those who ever lived on this sacred land known as Mannahatta, as well as to every artist who collectively and unknowingly created the Metropolitan Museum, Spirit House of Mannahatta.” — Lee Mingwei
Click on the links to Performance 2 and Performance 3.
