A performer dressed in white strode out near the center of the plaza at Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts and began blowing long, sonorous tones on a conch shell.
His call on Friday morning was a convocation to more than 100 dancers who suddenly appeared in flowing white outfits. They fanned out across the plaza and began running, darting and lunging elegantly like snowy egrets.
The dance piece, “Table of Silence Project 9/11,” has become an annual rite of remembrance at Lincoln Center and a “beautiful ritual of reverence and grief,” said Shanta Thake, chief artistic officer at Lincoln Center. It launched in 2011.
“Dancers can express what we often can’t put into words,” she said.
The piece, created by Jacqulyn Buglisi and put on by Lincoln Center in collaboration with Buglisi Dance Theatre, is meant to turn the plaza into a sanctuary of unity and healing.
“It’s a very emotional day for them and it’s a deeply meaningful part of our programming that we do every year,” said Ms. Thake. “You won’t find a dry eye, walking around.”
The performance began around 8 a.m. and was timed to finish around 8:46 a.m., when American Airlines Flight 11 crashed into the North Tower. Hundreds of onlookers gathered around, from invited attendees to dog walkers, delivery workers, construction workers and other New Yorkers spontaneously attracted to a spectacle taking place as the city stirred to life.
Even though Lincoln Center is a good five miles uptown from the World Trade Center, scores of New Yorkers who worked down there on Sept. 11 staggered past here that day covered in debris and lost in a stupor of disbelief.
And 25 years later, the neighborhood felt similarly hushed as dancers and attendees gathered for the performance. The dancers, who were accompanied by musicians on the violin, flute and saxophone, drew double takes from truck drivers and cab drivers crawling downtown in traffic on Columbus Avenue.
“What they’re trying to promote here is peace,” said one onlooker, Lyette Reback who with her husband, David Reback, traveled up from their home in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida to attend several Sept. 11 ceremonies.
Many attendees, and many performers, were not even born when the attacks occurred.
“To some young people, 9/11 is not a big deal, but I’ve always had a connection,” said Ismail Moharam, 23, a greeter at Lincoln Center, who said he emigrated from Yemen as a child. “My father watched it from Brooklyn that morning and he has always told me about it.”
Mr. Moharam, who is visually impaired, said he could still make out the forms of the dancers.
“As a Muslim from Yemen, it’s important to me, the healing part. You know, Muslims were not happy about 9/11 either,” he said. “It’s important to remember what happened and to teach people so there is not the motivation to do something like that again.”
At one point, dozens of dancers broke through the crowd, forcing the audience, scrambling to make space for them, to essentially become part of the choreography. Then the dancers arranged themselves in concentric circles and moved like clockwork to the meditative tolling of a large drum.
“It’s such a beautiful, fitting tribute to a horrible event,” said Sandra Carter, who lives nearby and attends the performance nearly every year. She recalled being on 23rd Street in Manhattan the day of the attacks, “and I still remember smelling the burning almost as soon as the first plane hit.”
“It’s something I’ll never forget,” she said. “But things like this are about remembering and still healing.”
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