(Now available for streaming or download at archive.org!)
Minyan (After Chagall) was created as a follow-up to Shekhinah: the Presence for FronteraFest in Austin, Texas. This video shows the premiere performance on September 10th, 1993.
Pieces for FronteraFest had to conform to several strict rules. The work could run no more than an hour. The lights were fixed to specific placements and settings, and we were limited in the number of times that they could be turned on or off. Any recorded sound could only be turned on or off once, and had to be on a single cassette. We could only have one on-stage rehearsal. (I suspect that I’m forgetting other rules.)
As usual, I found that working within clear parameters made developing a piece relatively easy. The first decision, I believe, was to use as the score an unedited excerpt from the field recordings that I had made at the Western Wall in Jerusalem in 1988. I wavered between two selections before choosing this segment. (The other possibility was the encounter with the woman who spoke of meeting Elijah. I used that segment in the piece “Theme by Rabbi Nachman” on my CD Jerusaklyn.)
The contents of the recording determined the events of the piece. I already knew that the piece would be a quartet including Nicholas Schriber and Kip Garth (previously in Shekhinah) plus Bryan Green and me. Each of us was assigned actions based on events on the tape:
- Nicholas’s character tried to go through a repeating litany of movement, but was drawn into an ecstatic dance whenever he heard the song “David Melech Yisrael.”
- Kip danced a solo every time that we heard the voice of a particular cantor.
- Bryan entered moving along the ground like an animal, eventually learning to stand, walk, and perform Nicholas’s litany.
- I interacted with one of the others each time that we heard a beggar on the tape.
The timing and descriptions of events were laid out in a one page document. Each performer was given a wide leeway to develop his own movement. For example, while Bryan came in by slithering along the ground in this performance, in the second performance (at an Austin Jewish culture festival), he leapt in from offstage, flying in from the wings about four feet about the ground and landing in an alert crouch.
Late in the process, we added the reading of my acrostic poem “J.e.r.u.s.a.l.e.m.” from the Tribute project, played in darkness at the beginning of the piece. As I recite the letters of the name, Manu Jobst reads the poem, each word of which begins with one of its letters, in order:
Just emerging, renewed, uplifted,
Solomon’s ancient land entreats: “My
joys exceed reality! Unchained
souls, awaken. Live each moment
joined, enveloping Rachel’s unknown
sons as light, expanding, mixes,
jells, establishing respites, unseen
sanctuaries, admitting lives even merciful
justice excludes.” Rising uncounted
stars are less encumbered, midnight
judges evening’s recitations, unheard
songs, alphabets, lovers, entranced, mate.
People have asked me what the piece is about. I don’t really know. People have given me, after seeing it, explanations of what it was about and who the characters were. I’m pleased that, while none of them were things that I had intentionally put in the piece, none were things that I wouldn’t have wanted to mean.
