63. Eurythmy Performance

Allow me to say a few words today, as always, before these eurythmy performances. It is not done to explain the content of the performances themselves, because artistic work must of course be effective through direct impression and sending an explanation in advance would actually be somewhat inartistic. However, an attempt is being made with what we call eurythmy here to find new possibilities for artistic work, new possibilities for movements, [namely] that eurythmy strives for a kind of real mute language. On the stage you will see movements of the individual human being and of groups of people in relation to one another. What is expressed by the individual human being or by groups of people is not meant to be a play of gestures or pantomime or anything else of a mimic nature, which has been found by chance to express the poetry or music that is accompanying it. Rather, what is presented here as movement is derived from the whole organization of the human being as logically as speech sounds are derived. Just as the individual sound cannot be interpreted through mimicry, so too the individual gestures that appear in eurythmy cannot be interpreted through mimicry or dance. Rather, the aim is to use sensory-supersensory observation, to use a Goethean expression, to discover the laws of phonetic language, so to speak.