Wayne State dance professor performs at NYC’s Museum of Modern Art

In the late 1960s, American visual artist Joan Jonas used mirrors as props to transform the perception of space and as devices for exploring representation, doubling, and the hierarchies of gender.

Fifty-five years later, Jonas' groundbreaking work is being reprised. And Wayne State University's Dr. Biba Bell, associate professor of dance in the Maggie Allesee Department of Theatre and Dance, is among 15 performers updating and reconstructing Mirror Piece I (1969) and Mirror Piece II (1970) from Jonas' notes and photographs.

"I'm excited to have been cast in one of the roles in the piece that Joan herself has performed, which involves speaking a text that she drew from Borges' 'Labyrinths,'" Bell said. "It's philosophical and poetic and discusses the mirror as a symbolic, culturally significant, and subject-forming object. My sense is that this work participates with the feminist politics of the time, which was part of a surge in performance and body art that took place in visual art and museum contexts."

This rare presentation of one of Jonas' most celebrated works will take place June 25 through June 30 at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City and will activate MoMA's public spaces. Bell will be performing the piece in both MoMA's Atrium, which is where they often hold performances that are adjacent to major exhibitions, as well as the outside sculpture courtyard.

"The courtyard performances will be very special and incorporate the marble pavers, pools of water, trees and greenery, sun and shade, and city sky in the reflections of the piece," Bell said. "I don't know if it's been performed outside since its premiere at Bard College, where it was performed in the grass."

In these works - titled Mirror Piece I & II (1969/2024) - the performers face an audience carrying mirrors and panes of plexiglass in synchronized, choreographed motions. The audience, performers, and surroundings are then reflected and fragmented in the moving mirrors as the piece unfolds, blurring the boundary between spectator and participant.

Bell auditioned for the project, she said, as Jonas has been an artist she's known about for most of her adult life and has been interested in. "I've been drawn to her early performance work since first visiting NYC and I saw her piece Songdelay (1973), "Bell said. "I was 16 years old and had only performed in the context of classical ballet. This work was mind-changing, to think about choreography, everyday movement, and the elegance and import of working within the cityscape - without the trappings of set or the theatre space."

As Jonas, who became a pioneer of video and performance art, recalls, "The mirror was a metaphor for me. A device to alter the image and to include the audience as reflection, making them uneasy as they view themselves in public." The performance on June 30 will also be followed by a conversation between Jonas, movement director Nefeli Skarmea, and Ana Janevski, curator in the Department of Media and Performance.

"The mirrors reflect the audience and the space and fragment the experience of witnessing for the audience and the bodies of the performers," Bell said. "While I haven't seen the piece - because we rehearse it away from the mirrors in the studio - I have seen documentation, and its effect is subtle yet extraordinary."