4. Unity and Freedom (Two Versions)

Embodying Unity
In our fourth session, we wanted to explore the experience of "unity" by exploring and playing with its opposite, "separation".  These are abstract concepts, and we challenged ourselves to make them as concrete as we could by grounding them in specific movement flows that we had enjoyed in our respective movement practices.  I had done several partnered movement warm-ups in my training in contact improvisation that embody these concepts, and in our discussion, Ebn, Adina and I strung these exercises together to create a movement flow.

Contact Improv, Meet Drama Improv
The three movement activities we decided to use were 1) individual improvised movement, in which the mover simply responded to the music in their own way, 2) a method acting warm up by Augusto Boal in which partners respond to each other by moving into and holding poses, 3) a mirroring exercise.  Initially, we discussed exploring moving from a state of separation to a state of unity by

3. Unity and Freedom

The question we began with: If Shema stands for oneness/unity and Geulah stands for freedom, what does it mean to say that oneness frees me?

Boundaries
To answer our initial question we began by searching for what we could take from previous classes to build on for this session? Last time we used the diea of boundaries and structure, starting with formal boundaries that progressively got looser and looser. We asked ourselves what question we wanted to put out at end of next session? Ebn reminded us of the power of doing something more than once ie) doing last week's class again and adding 1 element to it. Using relationship structure we could ask new question or same question in a different setting.

Three Poses
We decided to use three set yoga poses as our boundary or limiting factor. We would choose three

2. Unity and Freedom

Shaliach Tzibbur
Our discussion began with questions. In what ways did we want to engage the community - through group learning, group conversation, liturgy or a combination of all three? What sort of questions were we, as rabbinical students, currently addressing--through our studies or through work--regarding prayer? As rabbis we will often be in the position of leading prayer for our community. How do we both have an experience of prayer for ourselves and facilitate an experience for others? This question brought to our minds the role of one who facilitates prayer, the shaliach tzibbur. Knowing that we wanted to explore the relationship between G-d, the shaliach tzibbur and the kahal, we became interested in how the shaliach tzibbur simultaneously maintains a relationship with G-d and with the kahal, keeping the connection between all parts of the triangle (as Ebn diagrams it) alive. Whether leading prayer or participating with the community, what is our awareness like during tefilah?

Dynamic Tension
We knew that we wanted to draw on the shared knowledge of our rabbinical student community and to

1. Unity and Freedom

Starting with a Question
In brainstorming with Ebn, we decided we wanted to start with a specific question, "What's tefillah about?" as a prompt for a one word answer, and to think about that idea in terms of movement, and finally build the process of the session around that idea.  We took the "answer" of "close and distant" and explored how we could create a movement process with this theme.  Do we want to involve touch (sitting back to back - coming away and back towards the other person)?

Body Awareness
In any case, we wanted to keep the movement simple, and decided to start with body awareness - perhaps by doing a "body scan" and perhaps 5 Rhythms.  The way Ebn framed body awareness was using the image of a landing strip and talking about "how many bulbs are lit up around body".  Ebn  also brought up the idea of increasing people's "body literacy": how one movement affects other parts of body.

Visions of a Movement Minyan, Part 1

"Movement Minyan"
In our initial planning discussion with Ebn, Adina and I began to articulate the goals of the Movement Minyan.  Our broad goal was to create a "laboratory" that explores a specific question over a series of sessions, and figure out how to learn about it through movement (i.e., the question of "What is tefillat tzibbur," or communal prayer).

Dance as Prayer
One question we wanted to explore before planning our sessions was, assuming we can pray in a non-verbal mode, what makes dance "prayer", rather than non-prayerful movement?  Some of the factors we suggested were the way the movement space would be set up, people's internal experience of the movement, and the time that the movement happens.

Body and Practice
In creating our specific sessions, we decided we wanted to start with an introductory session to introduce people to their bodies and their relationship to Jewish practice.  Part of the goal of this was