A LIVING RITUAL OF PEACE; A LEGACY OF HOPE
Currently in production, TABLE OF SILENCE: THE DOCUMENTARY will bring Jacqulyn Buglisi’s groundbreaking choreographic work to the big screen. Featuring unprecedented 360-degree filming of Table of Silence with large-format cinema cameras, along with new interviews with key participants and behind-the-scenes footage of the rehearsal process, the film will allow this one-of-a-kind call to action for peace to touch new audiences for generations.
Directed by Lukas Hauser and filmed by cinematographer Danny Vecchione, the documentary will illuminate the origins of the piece in Buglisi’s work with Martha Graham and her unique experience of September 11th, tracing how it has evolved over fifteen years at Lincoln Center. Rooted in Buglisi’s longtime study of ancient labyrinths, the choreography of Table of Silence involves more than one hundred dancers forming three concentric circles—what Buglisi calls a “peace labyrinth" of healing Mandala energy—which becomes all the more salient when Buglisi receives a life-changing diagnosis. A story of heartbreaking loss, collective memory and the power of art, we can’t wait to share our film with the world and help inspire the change needed now more than ever.
MEET THE TEAM
LUKAS HAUSER
Director
Lukas Hauser directed the award-winning film BELOW SURFACE (2022) and has edited several HBO documentaries. THE BLACK LIST (2008) featuring Bill T. Jones and Toni Morrison Rock, which he edited, won an NAACP Image Award and premiered at the Sundance Film Festival.
DANNY VECCHIONE
Cinematographer
Danny Vecchione was recently cinematographer on GEOFF MCFETRIDGE: DRAWING A LIFE (2023) which won the Audience Award at SxSW, and on DOWN WITH THE KING (2021) which was named as one of the top 10 films of the year by the New York Times. Recently he lensed “Dying For Sex” for FX.
NEL SHELBY
Producer
Nel Shelby has produced dance film projects for over 20 years at major dance sites throughout the world, including the Kennedy Center, Vail International Dance Festival and New York City Center. Her documentary PS DANCE! (2015) was nominated for a New York Emmy.
JODY ARNHOLD
Executive Producer
Jody Arnhold is a renowned dance educator and advocate. After teaching dance for 25 years in New York City public schools, she created the Dance Education Laboratory at 92NY, help build Ballet Hispanico, and established the Arnhold Graduate Dance Education Program at Hunter College.
JUDITH BOOKBINDER
Producer
Judith Bookbinder served as Creative Vice President at Hearst for over 25 years. She produced BELOW SURFACE (2022), executive produced CITIZEN HEARST (2012), and also produced short films featuring Norman Foster, Cai Guo-Qiang and Richard Long.
SUSAN NUMEROFF
Producer
Susan Numeroff is a veteran entrepreneur, arts advocate, and community leader. Susan has served as a board member of Buglisi Dance Theatre since its inception, with a career spanning luxury retail, hospitality, and the performing arts.
EVA LIPMAN
Producer
Eva Lipman produced the Academy Award-nominated JIM: THE JAMES FOLEY STORY (2016) for HBO which won the Sundance Audience Award and a Primetime Emmy for Exceptional Merit in Documentary Filmmaking.
SUZANNE KONOWITZ
Associate Producer
Suzanne Konowitz has produced New York City dance projects for over 30 years, and has served as Executive Director at Buglisi Dance Theatre since 2004.
Lukas Hauser, 2001
Photograph by Timothy Greenfield-Sanders
A MESSAGE FROM THE DIRECTOR
​
I watched the towers fall from the northeast corner of Canal and Broadway—a vantage I found where the gaping wound in the South Tower was most starkly clear, the jumpers just barely visible. A dozen of us stood there bearing witness mournfully to our newly broken world, until we saw the first collapse and a cloud of dust blast toward us.
After many months, the nightmares subsided. Like so many other New Yorkers I learned to compartmentalize this trauma without actually dealing with it. It would be two decades later that I learned of an extraordinary living memorial to those lost on 9/11: Jacqulyn Buglisi's remarkable “Table of Silence.” It was the ultimate counterpoint to 9/11—a massive public dance work at Lincoln Center timed to coincide with the precise anniversary of that first plane impact. What the terrorists had aimed to achieve—fear, violence, disunity—this yearly performance ritual would labor to undo, with hundreds of bodies moving gracefully together and radiating a powerful call for peace. Having worked with the great Bill T. Jones on a previous documentary film, I was compelled to learn more about Table of Silence and its creator.
A protege of Martha Graham, Buglisi is a legend in the world of contemporary dance. Her works are imbued with a fascinating symbolic language involving archaeology, mythology and eastern mysticism; she wants both her dancers and her audiences to go deeper within themselves to better change the outer world. What better metaphor for the act of documentary filmmaking?
Our film will share the untold story of Buglisi’s masterwork, including the challenges in mounting it year after year. We aim to film it like no other dance work has been filmed before, and to explore its origins through loving rendered interviews with Buglisi’s collaborators, behind-the-scenes, rehearsal footage, and cinematic story telling. In our increasingly fractured and isolating world, the themes of TABLE OF SILENCE are more relevant today than they’ve ever been.
For more information about the Table of Silence documentary contact Judith Bookbinder at jbookbinder@tableofsilence.org