There is a labyrinth in front of an Episcopalian church near where I live which has always intrigued me. As I was plotting these 19 videos, I thought it could be a likely site for a piece, full of metaphor about journey, meditation, pathways through pandemics, search for spirituality, and more. A google click away I discovered it was the "Eleven circuit labyrinth" from Chartres Cathedral of which I have fond and profound memories experiencing as a teenager. Of course, life comes full circle.
Over the summer of 2020 I stopped at the labyrinth in the middle of a run or walk and practiced the pathway to the center, slowly building my familiarity with the structure. Now it's late fall 2020 and the journey through the pandemic is getting harder so it appears following the labyrinth path is ever more important. As I pondered the nature of the labyrinth and its serpentine paths, studied the various mathematical structures of the eleven rings, and researched the historical and mystical origins of labyrinths, I was drawn to meditate on fundamental elements of humans' physical structure, marveling in the serpentine, labyrinth-like structures of the inner ear, the gastrointestinal tract, and the uterus. These systems support and express life itself - sense of self in space, ability to be nourished, and receptivity to procreation. I have been interested in particular in the cochlear system that is sometimes referred to as the "labyrinth of the ear" and the fact that the vestibular nerve that helps sense our orientation in space is one of the first nerves to form in the fetus; that is how important balance and orientation is.
In 1919, William Butler Yeats wrote "The Second Coming", a poem that has seeped into collective cultural consciousness by way of many borrowed and repeated lines... read this blog post from The Paris Review regarding this phenomenon. "The centre cannot hold" is one oft repeated line, and it was written in a time of turmoil such as we are experiencing now including a global pandemic and social unrest, so the poem strikes a chord today. Through this brief dance and the sublime music by Hildegard von Bingen's 12th century chant, I offer this meditation with the conviction that we must journey to, and stay with, our sense of center. I only pray that "center" is not also "circumference"; I urge that center is in relation to others, not in exclusion to others.
I discovered OSU's Chadwick Arboretum had the same eleven ring labyrinth in a more secluded space, and so I chose to film my traverse there. I spent an hour or so clearing leaves and sand and twigs to help make the stone pathways more visible, and then decided to do the hand-held close-up filming of the pathway which is layered on top of the distant shot (thank you Ric) in order to maintain a kind of legibility of the space. The costume nods to the colors, layers, silhouette, and textures of middle ages in Europe, underscoring, I hope, a sense of the aeons of humans who have struggled to survive, find meaning, build infrastructures, keep faith, sing, and move, for the collective evolution of spirit.
the video: https://vimeo.com/473553419