The Origin and Development of Eurythmy 1912–1918

GA 277a — 28 August 1913, Munich

Address on Eurythmy

My dear friends! When Professor Capesius once came to Mrs. Felicia, he said that he always felt so refreshed by all the fairy tales and stories that the good Mrs. Balde could tell him.

Mrs. Balde was a straightforward lady, so she told him exactly what she thought: “Yes, it always gives me great pleasure to see how refreshed you are by what I can tell you, but you are such a poor listener, and that causes me great difficulty!”

As I said, she was an honest lady who spoke her mind.

CAPESIUS: “Yes, but I listen with all my powers of comprehension!”

FELICIA: “That's just it, you don't have the composure you need to listen.”

CAPESIUS: “Yes, what's wrong with my listening?”

FELICIA: “I don't think you'll understand me properly.”

CAPESIUS: “But I would like to understand!”

FELICIA: “Yes, you see, if you listened to me properly, your etheric body would dance – but it doesn't!”

CAPESIUS: “Why should my etheric body dance? And how should I do that?”

FELICIA: “Yes, you see, you have to understand how I actually come up with all the fairy tales I tell you.”

The good Professor Capesius was a little embarrassed and said: “You have told me so often that you receive the fairy tales from the spiritual world, and – I don't really dare to say what I want to say: I still cannot understand why these beings who speak to you always have to speak the language of those who hear them and then retell the fairy tales.”

FELICIA: “Yes, that's just it, you have to become smarter in this regard: the beings don't speak in any language, they move. And you have to understand everything that is movement in them.”

CAPESIUS: “How do you do that?”

FELICIA: "Yes, you see, you have to understand the art of letting your heart rise up into your head for a while. Then you feel a peculiar sensation from all the movements that the elf beings, the fairy-tale princes, and fairies make there. And what you feel there then flows like streams into your larynx: then you can tell the story. But if you listened carefully, your etheric body would also dance along. But since you cannot do that, you cannot understand everything, and much of what I am telling you is lost on you."

Now these messages from Mrs. Balde to Capesius have been picked up and attempts have been made — at least that is what we have done — to systematically develop these movements, these elf, gnome, and other angel dances into a kind of movement language.

In a wonderful way, it has become clear in many conferences with Mrs. Felicia that one can dance an intimate language, an expressive language — one may well use the word. In short, expressive dancing is possible, a kind of art of movement, which we have taken the liberty of calling the art of eurythmy. A kind of language through movement, a language that can be in a certain very beautiful relationship to the processes that take place in the spiritual world. For Mrs. Felicia was able, albeit unconsciously, to let her heart shine into her brain from the world of forms, which is the world of the physical plane, and thus she was able to glimpse into the world of the spirits of movement. And that is where she received her fairy tales.

Now it would be quite wonderful, my dear friends, if one could also bring with one this understanding that Capesius lacks, if one could let one's etheric body dance while one's physical body is completely still, even when receiving messages such as those Mrs. Felicia was able to give from the spiritual world. To do this, however, one must first familiarize oneself a little with the play of movement, which is in a certain harmony with the movements that are the expression of the world's sounds, the world's words. What could be established in the conferences with Mrs. Felicia should now form the basis of our art of eurythmy.

We should begin with an art that stands at a borderline and is therefore so significant. With dance, we can have, so to speak, the most everyday things, those closest to human drives and passions; but we can also embody the Dionysian element in human development.

A small sample will be presented to you, drawing your attention to what can be translated into the movement referred to here based on human words and thoughts, as well as to what should be understood in the movement itself, so that you may learn more and more to listen to what is expressed in such a language. Please note that we are dealing with something that is in its infancy. First of all, note the will that lies behind it and from which we believe that, in the course of time, something much more significant can develop than is present now.

But also note that there is a threefold will behind this eurythmy.

Firstly, an aesthetic element, an element that could be described as the element of beauty. Beauty is a direct expression of what is happening in the higher worlds in terms of movement: intensified movement of the higher worlds. So it is an artistic element, but at the same time it should be combined with a second element, which is pedagogical and didactic. The human soul, in its connection with the physical body, will develop in a way that is appropriate to its entire connection with the worlds to which it belongs, with the vowels and consonants that flow through the world as the word of the world, translated into visible movements of the physical body. Once our beginnings have reached greater perfection, this will achieve something quite different from ordinary gymnastics and similar exercises that are done today and are based solely on physiological laws.

Thirdly, the hygienic element: by making the human body appropriate to the world of movement and incorporating the thoroughly healthy mobility of human beings into the teaching, it will also be possible to have a healthy effect on the human organism and the human soul. For much of what is unhygienic in the outer world today stems from the fact that there is so little harmony between what the physical body does in adaptation to the outer world and what the etheric body actually demands of the physical body through its inner mobility. We would like to remedy this lack of harmony through a mobility of the physical body that corresponds to the etheric body.

And so it would be wonderful if our young people in particular – up to the age of sixty or seventy – could acquire an understanding of this eurythmy, which always seeks to bring the spiritual world down to the physical plane in a different way. If our young people gradually become accustomed to understanding this art of expression, there will be more and more among us to whom Mrs. Balde can say: “You are no longer listening to me so badly; you are already understanding me better.” She is an upright woman, and so that her uprightness does not lead her to make only negative judgments, so that we can show her understanding, let us acquire understanding for what she sees in the world of fairy tales and which she can put into words because her heart is able to rise to her head.