2. Alone and Together

Movement Minyan comes to Burning Man

Examining Assumptions
My brainstorm about this session grew out of my thinking about the previous session, Alone and Together I - since they were both happening in the particular context of the Burning Man festival, and would happen over the course of two consecutive days.  In gathering and reformulating material from the final session of the Movement Minyan, I had to continue to reflect on what it would mean to bring this practice to a context and group of people who I didn't know, and whose familiarity with Judaism, liturgy, and movement I had no way of being able to predict.


Making it Cosmic
This session, in many ways, was easier to introduce than the first since so many people are familiar

1. Alone and Together

Moving the Minyan to the Desert
Adina and I discussed the exciting opportunities for challenging the Movement Minyan to explore new horizons by facilitating two sessions at the Burning Man festival.  When designing these sessions, we couldn't know who we were designing them for, but could assume they would bring a wider range of familiarity with Judaism than our regular "venue", Hebrew College.  Through sharing and reflecting on some of our experiences in workshops there, and of the space and energy of the festival, generally, some themes that could be particularly engaging to explore with people on "the playa" emerged.  We noticed that some of the themes we'd already explored (of "togetherness" or unity and alone-ness or separation) resonated most deeply in this discussion, so decided that it would be powerful to revisit two sessions we had already done and think about how to make them deliciously immediate and accessible experiences in a context radically different from Hebrew College.



Principle #10: Immediacy
We decided two of the richest sessions to harvest material from and prepare for the desert were the

4. Modes of Leadership

In the Deep Blue Sea

We began, of all places, in the ocean. To explore the experience of all together together we started by thinking about nature. What species do we know of that move all together together? The image that came to mind was a school of fish. Somehow, each fish is a separate organism, but as an adaptive and protective mechanism, the fish are able to sync up with one another and create almost a super-fish. How, we wondered, are fish able to remain separate, yet become so intimately connected that they move as one being? Further, how could we get a feeling for this experience through the body? Here's where our brainstorming goes wild!

One Fish Two Fish...School of Fish

For an idea we didn't end up going with, we spent a lot of time brainstorming, so we wanted to include all of that here.After spending some time excitedly browsing through YouTube videos watching swimming schools of fish, we

3. Modes of Leadership

Differentiating Modes

We began by thinking about the idea of praying "alone together", and how that might look as a movement flow.  After Adina and I had an initial meeting in which we had some difficulty differentiating between the mode of "praying alone together" and "praying together", which we felt would be a wonderful mode to explore in our final session of the semester, we talked about different movement activities we'd done that embodied this particular type of prayer experience.

Being Alone with Others

Ultimately, this particular session became an experiment in planning backwards: we had hoped to try to facilitate a session of the Movement Minyan that was inspired by something I had experienced at the Silent Disco.  At this type of event, participants each wear a set of wireless headphones to which DJs broadcast their music, so the dance floor is essentially silent, lending itself to people's individual experience of the music while they dance together in the same space.

2. Modes of Leadership

Initial Thoughts
For this sessions we wanted to make a very clear distinction between call and response, that is to say between moving/saying and stopping/listening. By exploring each of these dynamics separately we could then examine the dynamic that arises as these boundaries shift throughout prayer. One goal was to keep in mind the question: what does it mean to be fully alive in this space? We knew we wanted to at least start with something very structured to highlight the unique aspects of call and response. We continued to discuss the idea of presenting what we've learned to community at some point, using these modes to present.

Call and Response
For this session we wanted to create a group experience involving listening and responding in order to explore the dynamic of call and response in prayer. Our center focus would be on the figure dictating action, as it is in traditional prayer. However, even as we looked at the different rolls of caller and

1. Modes of Leadership

Planting  Seeds
We began by setting broad goals for the Movement Minyan as it moved into its second semester of existence - namely that we wanted to use it to create an ecstatic communal experience, surface new ideas in relation to prayer and G-d, use the body to answer questions, and ensure people left the Minyan with a sense of a quality they want to recreate in their personal and communal prayer experiences.


Collective Action
Some of the experiences Adina and I discussed working with this semester included exploring in the dark with the body, doing partner poses, and guiding intense meditation sessions.  We also explored the idea of bringing in another Contact Improvisation exercise that involved the whole room moving and each person being responsible to respond.  Continuing to delve into our own experiences of ecstatic movement, we talked about my

Visions of a Movement Minyan, Part 2

It's All in the Question
We came back from winter break excited to expand and deepen our work with the Movement Minyan. In our initial session with Ebn we reviewed what we learned from our work with the Minyan first semester. One primary learning was the value of asking a question that can only be answered through the body. From being in school all day engaged in intellectual matters, our tendency was towards brain-centered questions. With Ebn's help we were working to shift these questions so that the body could provide the answers. Ebn was also helping us to break down a complicated question to its essence in order to make it answerable. For instance, there are so many nuances that could be focused on in the flow of prayer from the Shema to the Amidah. Ebn's questions and direction helped us narrow and simplify so that we could focus on one dynamic: the interplay between oneness and freedom.

Facilitation
Not only were we learning what questions to ask, but how to effectively facilitate an experience to