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
try to create space for everybody.  Towards this end, we wanted to start with basic movement forms, which may not look "Jewish" at beginning of our movement series.

Closeness and Distance
Ebn then asked Adina and I some questions toward beginning to articulate what the Movement Minyan might explore in its first series of sessions: What are the forms of tefillah (or "prayer")?  What kind of interactions do they have with one another?  What tensions do they have with one another?  He suggested that our work can be taken into the world of movement, at the body level without tefillah for a few weeks.  One dynamic that we thought about exploring, based on this series of questions, was that of closeness and distancing

Form and Improvisation
We decided to create a four session plan for the Movement Minyan, during which it would meet every other week - and during our third week, make a connection between the physical exploration of this dynamic, and how the insights we glean from exploring this dynamic through movement might play out in a prayer setting.  At this point, we thought about the balance between structure and spontaneity in our sessions, and noted that people have to learn improvisation and by first knowing how to work with form - and only then learning how to break form.  Apropos this topic, Ebn shared that he learned about boundaries and structure, "there's no slavery like lack of rules".  Some specific forms, or structures, that we thought about using included: moving in a straight line, while changing bodily orientation; moving body parts in the same direction; bringing in a siddur (or "prayer book") and seeing how the siddur allows people to work with real issues of prayer experientially through physical work.

Ritual Frame
Some other general suggestions that Ebn gave us toward formulating a Movement Minyan were that we need to have specific, contained goals, and a working plan (i.e., a question and a structure for how to work through that question).  He also suggested we ritualize some element of each session (for example, how we frame it or close it).  It's about defining a good question, he said.