Audience Reviews
Feedback and Glimpses of our recent performances
’Shakespeare’s plays like Kalidasa’s have universal human values like love, simplicity, truth, power, humour, melancholy, betrayal and repentance. The otherwise tragic play was enhanced by the elements of drama. First and foremost, the actors who were dynamic in their stage presence, carried dialogue delivery, acting, movement, gestures & facial expressions so naturally. Such performance that had flawlessly sunk into the Etheric Flow of the actors was surely a result of “Rome was not made in a day”. Dedication & sincere team work is very visible. Infact after the initial recognition of my friends on stage, I slowly forgot who they were, as the characters had taken over my ‘so involved’ soul and started speaking to me their emotions. The scenes were riveting.
The mood of the play was created by the accompanying sound and light show. The musicians were awesome. The percussion and the black and white lights that made the thunder & lightning OR the sitar that brought in the mood of melancholy when King Lear realises the truthful love of Cordelia, very late or even the dholak that brought in the Hindi party songs, all added a flavour of Indian-ness to the Shakespearean play.
What to say of those simple and elegant costumes, that transformed Indian Salwars & Kurtas with embellishments into a Eurythmy adaptation? There were scenes where everyone came on stage to do Eurythmy. The choreography was scintillating and matched the music.
The scenes connected to the elements of nature, sun & wind, fire & air, thunder & lightning all took the play from the physical realm into the spiritual and the effect of the macrocosmic world on the macrocosmic man. It was as if Man (King Lear) stops to listen to the spirit of Nature when in deep pain.
The Sutradaar or narrator wonderfully linked the parts of the play that were performed through his simple narratives.
Overall an enjoyable evening and a refreshing vitality in our inner spirit, something to learn from the amazing team spirit & coordination. I finally thought all this could have only been possible with a director who recognises form & freedom. Kudos to the work of Eurythmy India. May your tribe increase.’
Dear group of Eurythmy India,
I want to express my reverence for your touching, intense, joy- and beautiful performance at our Eurythmy school in Stuttgart!
The way you brought Shakespeare’s masterly piece ‘King Lear’ to life by expressing it through the arts and colours of your culture is totally unique, tapping the full potential of Shakespeare’s universal genius and celebrating it as well as the many facettes of your own backgrounds!
To me, also the way you are staging theatre along with Eurythmy is truly innovative. The Art of Eurythmy definitely needs such creative approaches to find it’s home among the performing arts, revealing her potential and magic!
I am very grateful for the immense effort everyone in the group has made to make this important contribution to our modern culture happen!
Inspired and with joy,
B. M. (eurythmist)
“Wow… full of heart and power…Upon seeing that this evening I think the west have lost something, and that something the east of the world still has.
Superb work.
Excellent standard.
Thank you for such a great night.”
(Dear Dan,)
Thankyou to all in Eurythmy India for the wonderful Love and be Silent performance last Saturday at Rudolf Steiner House.
At the beginning you mentioned Rudolf Steiner’s written remark that Eurythmy and Drama will be able to unite.
During the performance and increasingly toward the culminating end, it became clear that Eurythmy India has accomplished the union Rudolf Steiner referred to.
Going beyond a combination of the two, the performance built-up into a partnership of eurythmy and drama, a single whole.
Each on its own was full of skill : strength in the eurythmy and soul-food in the drama.
For the eurythmy, those particular instruments seemed to be the right ones. The eurythmy to the music played on the Sitar was .. just .. amazing.
These are people, we said to ourselves, who are training and trained in eurythmy .. yet among them are skilled actors, both ladies and gentlemen, so able in drama as to touch, meet, strike, an audience of souls.
It could be called a play, an imaginative rendering from Shakespeare’s King Lear .. brought more alive by the eurythmy.
It could be called eurythmy, woken-up through drama.
“Yesterday I saw the first performance in Europe of this wonderfull group of Asian eurythmists, in Witten Annen.
It was amazing what they brought on the stage: an integration of eurythmy, speech and drama, classical Western pianomusic from Yucong Huang and Indian music from a great tabla and a sitarplayer. They perfomed parts of King Lear, but in an Indian setting. All together it was a marvellous, dynamic and intens experience!
I know some of the eurythmists personally and so I have seen them developing during their eurythmystudies. It was for all of them a life-changing proces. It was meant to be a five-year training with every year 5 modules, located in India. But because of covid it took even more years. The group stayed together and now their Europetour is there! If you get the chance, try to see one of their performances in Dornach, Stuttgart or London! And support their work!”
‘’Passionate but not sentimental – I understood more of Lear than ever before and felt so much with the King’s integrity filled weeping and speaking – the daughters all were so impressive and such different characters, the transitions from eurythmy to drama to dance were stirring, poignant, tragic and the storytelling skillfully (and humorously at one time) woven in. Kent was clear and strong and moving and all put their hearts and souls into this tragic story…yet it seemed to be happening on different levels as if something hopeful could be gained from playing in and witnessing this story unfold. So refreshing to see and hear gesture and speech working together so accurately… The music is great! Piano and traditional sitar ( we think?) and tabla – all complimenting each other and the acting and emotions behind the acting and eurythmy. So poignant the eurythmy between Lear and Cordelia. The flag fight “WoW!”…. Bravo to all who have taken part, front stage, back stage, side stage Bravo and thank you 👏🏻👏🏻🙏🏻’’
Dear (Diana, Dan), cast & musicians
I wanted to congratulate you on your inspiring work and performances tonight. I was delighted at how the characters’ subtleties, humour and feelings were portrayed with such integrity and the lines spoken so clearly. The Eurythmy expressively set the soul mood between scenes and the large group filled the space beautifully with their flowing movements. What a wonderful evening – thank you all so much.
With Thanks
P.R. (eurythmist)
“I arrived back home in Edinburgh with a feeling of the Angels, Archangels and Archai all being very involved with the play last night. I found the Eurythmy with the acting worked very well to bring a picture of human endeavour and spiritual participation.”
First of all, I want to thank you all full heartedly for the inspiring experience on Saturday, the whole program that you and your students and musicians from so many different Eastern countries brought to us at the Steiner House in London.
I can only have a glimpse of the amount of work, dedication and effort put in, in order to bring this big troupe to Europe, and after years of teachings and working together to achieve such production.
The afternoon started with the Sitar and Tabla concert, by the 2 Indian musicians. It was an hour of immersion into their culture, creating a mood of meditation, opening the door for my appreciation and experience into their culture.
This was followed by workshops, led by some of the students.
I chose the Indian classical dance and eurythmy. Lively strong gestures were introduced, with detailed understanding and command for our physical bodies, with challenging coordination, rhythms and fun. They (3 ladies) led it with confidence, taking us, about 30 people non-eurythmists and eurythmists, into a journey of discovery of what they also went through, “from the roots of their ‘grounding’ classical dancing culture into the transformation to the western eurythmy elements into lightness and upwards striving, bothbringing spiritual content.” More or less their words. Such joy and grace.
The second workshop I took part was Sitar, Tabla and Eurythmy.
We were led into the experience of listening to the melody played by the sitar’ musician, accompanied by the tabla.’Shimmering’, ‘vibrating light’, qualities mostly shared from our experiences. When moving with the interval gestures and the form in space, it was an enlivening experience with the sound of those instruments and quality of movement.
All these enrichening experiences led me to be heart warmedand open to the evening performance, with a living perception of their culture; an essential process, from my perspective.
The performance was an impressive show, with a deep archetypal content from a Shakespeare play. It was opened with a beautiful and harmoniously moved tone eurythmy piece, involving the whole group. What an amazing surprise when they shifted from that mood, into the dramatic performance! The eurythmy pieces accompanied the whole story bringing moods and strengthening the atmosphere in the different scenes.
I was fully taken through the development of it, from beginning to end, with focus and interest. I was impressed by their skills with the English language, and some of their own speaking language.
I was totally inspired and refreshed after such a performance. Thank you!
Your adult-students were blessed by having the opportunity of not only having their eurythmy training but also, the speech and drama component with presence and command.
The other element that stroked me was that, after so many years of their training, and such hard work for them in immersing into a different culture altogether, you teachers managed to keep their folk-soul still revealed and expressed ….. I encourage you and all students to keep up with their development, deepening their Anthroposophy and eurythmy skills to bring it strongly into the world.
Wishing you much strength to carry on your strong, richwork.
With gratitude and respect,
London, UK on 10/07/2024