Introductory Words to a Eurythmy Performance

Eurythmy¹ Eurythmy is said to be an art that uses movement forms of the human organism in and out of space, as well as moving groups of people, as its means of expression. However, it is not about mimic gestures or dance movements, but about a real, visible language or song. When speaking and singing, the human organs shape the air stream in a certain way. If one studies the formation of sound, vowels, consonants, sentence structure, verse formation, and so on, in a spiritually alive way, one can form very definite ideas about the plastic forms that arise during the corresponding speech or song revelations. These can now be recreated by the human organism, especially by the most expressive organs, the arms and hands. This makes it possible to see what is heard when singing or speaking.

Because the arms and hands are the most expressive organs, eurythmy consists primarily of the shaped movements of these organs; then the movement forms of the other organs are added in a supportive way, as with ordinary speech, facial expressions and ordinary gestures. The difference between eurythmy and dance can be seen particularly clearly by looking at the eurythmic accompaniment of a piece of music. In this case, what appears to be dance is only a secondary matter; the main thing is the visible singing that is created by the arms and hands.

One should not think that a single form of movement in eurythmy is arbitrary. At a particular moment, a certain form of movement must be created as an expression of something musical or poetic, just as a certain tone must be created in singing or a certain sound in speech. In the language of movement of eurythmy, the human being is as bound as in singing or speaking to tone and sound. But he is equally free in the beautiful, artistic design of eurythmic movement forms as he is in language or song.

This enables us to present a piece of music that is being played in eurythmy, in a visible song, or to present a recited or declaimed poem in a visible language at the same time. And since language and music come from the whole human being, their inner content appears all the more vivid when the audible is accompanied by the visible. For everything that is sung and spoken actually moves the whole human being; in ordinary life, the tendency to movement is only held back and localized in the organs of speech and song. Eurythmy only reveals what is always inherent in these human expressions of life as a tendency to move, but which remains hidden in the disposition. - A kind of orchestral interaction of the audible and visible is achieved by adding eurythmy to instrumental music performance and to recitation or declamation.

For recitation and declamation to be presented in connection with eurythmy, it is important to note that these must occur in a truly artistic form of language. Reciters or declaimers who only emphasize the prose content of the poem cannot participate in eurythmy. True artistic poetry arises only through the imaginative or musical shaping of language. The content of prose is not the artistic element; it is only the material through which the pictorial aspect of language, or also the beat, rhythm, verse structure and so on, should reveal itself. All poetic language is already a hidden eurythmy. The reciter or declaimer must bring out of the poem what the poet has put into it through the pictorial, plastic or musical aspect of language. Dr. Steiner has been specially training this art of recitation and declamation for years. Only such a language art can be performed together with eurythmy, because only then can the reciter offer the ear what the eurythmist presents to the eye in the way of sound formation and sound sculpture. It is only through such interaction that what really lives in poetry is brought before the soul of the listener and spectator.

Eurythmy is not intended for an indirect understanding of the intellect, but for direct perception. The eurythmist must learn the visible language form by form, just as a human being must learn to speak. But the effect of eurythmy accompanied by music or speech is one that is felt directly through mere contemplation. Like music, it also has an effect on people who have not learned the forms themselves. For it is a natural, an elementary revelation of the human being, while language always has something conventional about it.

Eurythmy has arisen in the present day in the same way as all the arts arose in their corresponding epochs. These arose from the fact that one brought a soul content to revelation through corresponding artistic means. When a certain artistic means had been mastered to such an extent that it could be used to reveal to the senses what the soul experiences, an art was created. Eurythmy is created by learning to use the most noble of artistic means, the human organism, this microcosm, itself as a tool. In the art of mime and dance, this only happens in relation to parts of the human organism. Eurythmy, however, uses the whole human being as its means of expression. But before such a performance, the audience's forbearance must always be appealed to. Every art had to go through an initial stage. This also applies to eurythmy. It is at the beginning of its development. But because it uses the most perfect instrument imaginable, it must have unlimited possibilities for development. The human organism is this most perfect instrument; it is in reality the microcosm, containing in concentrated form all the secrets and laws of the world. If, through the shaping of movements in eurythmy, we can bring to manifestation what is contained in the essential nature of the organism as a language that physically expresses the whole experience of the soul, then we must be able to express the secrets of the world artistically in a comprehensive way.

What eurythmy can offer at present is only the beginning of what is possible in the direction indicated. But because it makes use of means of expression that can have such a relationship to the nature of the world and of man, it may be hoped that in its further development it will prove itself to be a fully-fledged art in its own right alongside the others.