Featured Presentations

Lilan Laishley of Tennessee-USA, Ben Nicholson of Indiana-USA, Ole Jensen of Denmark, and Cordelia Rose of New Mexico-USA will be featured in 2010.


A Walk into History: The Harmony Society Labyrinths
Lilan Laishley

Explore the mystery of why the Harmony Society, a 19th century utopian community that founded New Harmony, built three labyrinths on the American frontier. Weaving together the Harmonists’ religious beliefs that include God as both male and female and the transformative power of alchemy, we discover that this Gathering occurs in one of the most fascinating places in American history.
 
Dr. Lilan Laishley has a Ph.D. in Religious Studies from the University of Pittsburgh and has taught comparative religion at several universities. She investigates the role of labyrinths in religion, both past and present. She is a specialist in the use of symbolism and ritual and is a consulting astrologer and counselor.


What Makes Labyrinth Geometry Sacred?
Ben Nicholson 

A comprehensive study of meanders from circa 750 BCE Greek Geometric pottery yields a new geometric system for classifying labyrinths. This work has led to the generation of 100’s of monocursal labyrinth designs. The lecture will ask how geometric principles can be woven into a meditative practice, leading to the question: What makes geometry sacred?

Trained as an architect, Ben is an artist/writer living in New Harmony, Indiana, teaching architectural design/theory at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He exhibited labyrinth drawings at the Whitney Museum of American Art (2005) and 220 labyrinth drawings at the Venice Biennale of Architecture (2008), and is working on a book about labyrinth design. 

 

Maypole Dancing in the Granary
Saturday, November 12th,  9:00 pm - 10:00 pm
Ole Jensen and Cordelia Rose
A group of New Harmony Dancers will demonstrate a traditional European maypole ribbon dance outside the labyrinth.    Different versions of maypole ribbon dances are taught to sixteen or more dancers per dance inside the labyrinth.   Danish and American dances will be called and led by Ole Jensen and Cordelia Rose.   Bring your laughter and your shoes to dance in!
 
Music will be played by the musicians of the Artists Guild of New Harmony.
The Maypole was carved by Ben La Budde of New Harmony.
Pumpkins for marking  the labyrinth’s pathways donated by Frey Pumpkins of Gibson City.


Ole Jensen Owner of the labyrinth theme park Labyrinthia in Denmark. He got interested in labyrinths after visiting pioneering Stuart Landsborough’s wood panel maze in New Zealand in 1991 and even more while working with Danish labyrinth enthusiast Jorgen Thordrup from 1997 to 2008. Ole is keeping Jorgen’s labyrinth activities going such as maypole dances on labyrinths, which have been carried out in Denmark since 1978.
 

Cordelia Rose is a retired museum registrar who has moved from midtown Manhattan to the wilds of New Mexico and started a second life as a yoga teacher and labyrinth builder.  She holds workshops and events in the four labyrinths and plan of a maze which make up Whitewater Mesa Labyrinths.  Influenced by the Danes, Cordelia has been dancing the maypole in her classic labyrinth since 2008.