The Origin and Development of Eurythmy 1923–1925
GA 277d — 13 August 1924, Torquay
Eurythmy Performance
The semi-public summer course “The True and False Paths of Spiritual Research” (GA 243) took place in Torquay from August 11 to 22, 1924, with four eurythmy performances; this was followed by a stay in London until the end of August. A eurythmy performance was also given there on August 26, 1924. Rudolf Steiner wrote an essay for the eurythmy lectures in England—his last on eurythmy—which summarizes the points he considered essential. This essay was probably translated and read aloud before the performances.
“Eurythmy”
It cannot be a question of preceding the eurythmic performance as a work of art with an introduction. Art must work through itself; and to want to explain an artistic creation is something unartistic. But in the case of eurythmic experiments, we are not dealing with the old, familiar sources of art and the familiar artistic language of form, but with something new in both respects. Therefore, allow me to say a few words about these new artistic means and this artistic language of form.
On stage, one will see moving individuals and groups of people. These movements will express the content of poems and musical creations. But this is not done through mimicry, pantomime, or dance-like gestures. Eurythmy should not be confused with these related arts, against which there is absolutely nothing to be said.
Eurythmy is a real visible language and a visible song. It is developed from the laws of human organization in the same way as sound in singing and words in speech.
This had to be achieved through careful study of what happens in the human organism during speech and singing. This cannot be achieved through ordinary physiological observation, but only through “sensory-supersensory perception.”
Such perception reveals that gestures and facial expressions are suppressed in human speech. These gestures want to emerge, but they do not; instead, they are transformed by the brain organism into formative forces that are united with the activity of the will organism and transmitted to the air through the larynx and its neighboring organs. In the study that created eurythmy, the suppressed gestures that live in speech and singing are brought to light and transferred to the whole person and to groups of people. This enables movement to be used for speaking and singing. The result is spatial movements in humans, to which ordinary facial gestures and even dance relate as babbling relates to speech.
A poem or a piece of music thus becomes visible to the eye, just as speaking or singing makes it audible to the ear.
The entire stage design can be created in the spirit of eurythmy. We also try to design the lighting effects so that their sequence becomes a visible, melodious expression of the poetic or musical work.
Parallel to the visible eurythmic reproduction of the poetic, recitation and declamation appear. When performed with eurythmy, these must also be eurythmically designed. True artistic poetry is based on speech formation. This, and not the prose content of the poetry, is the main thing. The melodious and the imaginative are contained in the shaping of words. This musical and linguistic creativity must be brought out in declamation and recitation, not the emphasis of the prose content. In this way, the artistic nature of poetry will be expressed in eurythmy, especially in recitation and declamation. Prose cannot be recited in a pointed manner in eurythmy, because eurythmic movements are alive with images and melody, not linguistic logic. In addition to the artistic element of eurythmy, which is expressed in this performance, there are two others: the hygienic-therapeutic and the pedagogical-didactic.
Because the movements performed by humans in eurythmy originate from a healthy organism, they can also be transformed in such a way that a sick or weak organism, when performed in a knowledgeable manner, can be healed or strengthened by them. This gives rise to curative eurythmy. It is not the same as artistic eurythmy, but it has developed from it. In the clinical-therapeutic institutes affiliated with the Goetheanum in Dornach, in Dornach and Stuttgart, this eurythmy is cultivated as a therapeutic branch.
At the Waldorf School in Stuttgart and the training school in Dornach, eurythmy is cultivated for pedagogical and didactic purposes as a form of spiritual gymnastics. Many years of experience have shown that children immerse themselves in this movement language in the same way as they previously did in spoken language. And because the soul and spirit are involved in this process without neglecting the body, eurythmy is a beneficial addition to gymnastics. In particular, it helps children develop their willpower through free control of their bodies.
Eurythmy is currently still in the early stages of its development. Its creators are well aware of this. But they also know that it has immense potential for perfection. This is because it uses the human body itself as a tool. The body is an expression of all the secrets of the world. It is a true microcosm. When the human soul speaks through it, it can artistically reveal all the secrets of the world in the revelation of its own inner life. Therefore, we can believe that one day eurythmy will be able to stand alongside its older sister arts as a fully-fledged younger art form. —