Eurythmy
What is Eurythmy ?
Eurythmy is a movement discipline developed by Rudolf and Marie Steiner in Europe in the early twentieth century. It has its applications in education, performance and therapy, and is today an ideal tool for self development as well as an artistic or education discipline. Eurythmy is an essential component of Waldorf Steiner education, now the largest independent school movement in the world, and qualification as a Eurythmist can lead to a professional career as performer, teacher or therapist. Today there are eurythmy schools all over the world, a list of which can be found here- Eurythmy schools worldwide
Eurythmy as an art form is founded on the idea that musical tone and the sounds of human speech have an intrinsic formative energy, which can be manifested and expressed artistically through the various forms and gestures learnt in the training. Eurythmy as a performance art demands the deepest possible integration with what can be called the higher self. It is an arduous training with challenges on many levels. As a relatively young art form, it can and must continue to evolve. In some ways it is the descendent of the ancient temple dances of Greece, and carries a comparable level of spiritual power – in other ways it is a fun and highly social art that can be used to address the needs of our own time.
For further reference, here is a link to a series of lectures by Rudolf Steiner on Eurythmy:
Eurythmy as a Performing Art
As a performance art Eurythmy grew and developed through collaboration between Steiner and the young Lory Maier Smits. Small performances were given as soon as Lory had mastered some of the basic elements which she worked tirelessly to achieve.
Eurythmy as performance is the root and trunk of all Eurythmy work today. Throughout its history, Stage Groups and Eurythmy Performing Ensembles, first based in Switzerland and then increasingly in Germany, Europe, the UK and all over the world including the USA, South Africa, Russia, South America, Japan and Australia. As of today, Eurythmy is performed internationally, across all continents to a greater or lesser degree. There is tremendous potential for the growth and development of the performance of Eurythmy.
What is Eurythmy as a performance art? A typical program in the 1960s, 70s, 80s and 90s would involve texts and music that would create a desired mood and bring the audience into a feeling and experience of movement and flow, revealing the spirit of the spoken poem, story or drama and the style and character of the chosen music such as Mozart, Beethoven Chopin or Mendelsohn. Large orchestras, chamber music, single instruments and most often the piano, accompany the eurythmist’s movement and usually live. The recitation is done by those who have studied and perfected this art as indicated and developed by Rudolf and Marie Steiner. More recently in 2006 there was a notable and beautiful production with a very large cast and crew, touring concert halls, opera houses and theatres in Switzerland, Germany and Austria. International tours by other smaller ensembles and groups continue to be successful.
At present the work of performing Eurythmy to many audiences all over the world is at a critical point. Small shoots and new endeavours are beginning to flourish and Eurythmy performances are set to become ever more relevant and inclusive in the years ahead.
“What can I expect if I attend a Eurythmy performance? Do I need to know the genre and recognise all the detail of the movement?” You will see and experience colour, flow, the play of light, eurythmical movement with special emphasis on the movement of the arms and the accompanying movement of the eurythmist’s veils. The purpose of the veil is to reveal and express, reveal and move the air. You might experience the emergence of the spirit of the music and the spoken word in such a way that the human being, the human gestalt and especially the limbs, express a message of beauty, power, and truth with all the possible complex shades that the director, the choreographer, the performers and ultimately the human soul can encompass. Each gesture has meaning and corresponds exactly to the style of the piece, each colour is chosen to assist the revelation of that which the author or the composer wishes to express and each movement in space must reveal a truth and not a mere interpretation! Therefore, the pressure and expectation are great indeed as is the expertise that is required.
The journey of performance preparation through to execution, the journey of living with content through to carrying it over into something that grips and transform audiences, is a manifold and deeply challenging but entirely necessary process and truly facilitates the development of Eurythmy.
Ultimately what Performance Eurythmy offers is a message from the human soul in all its manifold possibilities.
Eurythmy as a Visible Music
Like the dance in its early religious form, Eurythmy gives a spiritual understanding and experience of the word and of music, enlivening the health giving powers and energies of the body.
In the case of music eurythmy it is the notes, the intervals, the rhythm, beat and melody which is expressed in bodily movement. The experience given through one musical interval is entirely different from another. Eurythmy marks these differences by the variety of gesture and movement which follow the actual line and cadence of a melody expressing the inner nature of music through a response aligned to and in harmony with the archetypal nature of the human being.
For the purposes of understanding the qualities that eurythmy can offer, the nature of the human being is perceived and experienced as having three archetypal aspects: The capacity to think, expressed in the quiet rounded still head, the capacity to feel, expressed in the breathing lung and the beating heart, protected within the rib cage and the capacity to do things and to transform, expressed in the digestion and the limbs.
Thus it is possible that eurythmy can express music with the full human being as the instrument, tuned to grace, beauty and flow!
Eurythmy as a Visible Speech
So, how can speech be made visible? Well, the written word is one form of visible speech, a magical code that, when we have learned to decipher it, unlocks in us thoughts, images, feelings and connects us to our fellow human beings. But it is mute, and the experience of language when we read by-passes the world of how words sound. Eurythmy needs to work with the audible word – the sounding of vowels and consonants, the rhythms and emphases of the spoken word. It can also incorporate the subtler, more abstract aspects of language, like grammar, and express its imaginative and emotional content. Eurythmy works from the premise that the entire bodily constitution of the human being can provide an articulate and expressive instrument for the act of speaking. The complex of organs we normally employ to speak (larynx, lung, ear, etc) make speech audible, but eurythmy is able to coax out of slumber, the ability to speak (and listen) that is dormant in our limbs. The result is a language of movement. Every vowel and consonant has a basic gesture, there are choreographic principles to show the structural elements of language like grammar, verse or metre, and others to show the psychological ‘drivers’ in language – thought, feeling, action, etc. All these principles allow for endless contextual variations, making eurythmy an art with inexhaustible possibilities.
For the purposes of eurythmy performance (and eurythmy was developed initially as a performance art), narrative, drama and poetry are all sister arts that invite collaboration with and expression through eurythmy. Poetry above all, lends itself really well to expression through eurythmy.
Eurythmy in Education
