The drill hall at the Park Avenue Armory can feel gloomy and imposing but in Indra’s Net, the latest full-length work from Meredith Monk, that emptiness transforms into something patient and open-handed, offering space as a gift to an otherwise cramped city and pressurized population.
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Monk’s title comes from a Buddhist metaphor. A wise god-king stretches an infinite net over the universe and sets a jewel at every point of intersection. Each of the glittering jewels is infinitely faceted, reflecting every other jewel and the net. The metaphor explains the interconnectedness of all life, of all phenomena, in all worlds and universes, along with the sublime emptiness in between every point and line of the next. This void is not the sadness of lack, but the release of self, the quiet stillness of presence.
Monk’s piece, which had its world premiere last year at the Holland Festival in Amsterdam and had its North American premiere here, is the result of well over a decade of thinking by the artist. It is part performance and part art installation, but it also feels like a ritual or a meditation. In the Armory, the spaces between—between ceiling and stage, between actors and audience—feel as........