Eurythmy Performance

And so in eurythmy – accompanied by recitation, declamation, and music – we have before us the strongest possible form of human expression conceivable in space. One has before one something in which the soul and spirit that dwell within the human being come before the eyes of the spectator through the whole human organism. This naturally makes it necessary that when reciting or declaiming accompanied by eurythmy, one should return to the truly artistic forms of past ages, which did not yet seek, as today's unartistic prosaic pointillism, but knew what was important in recitation and declamation: speech formation, the imaginative in onomatopoeia, the tactile, the rhythmic, the harmonious. Language can only be shaped artistically to the extent that one is able to incorporate an imaginative or musical element into it. Goethe stood in front of his actors with a baton when he rehearsed his iambic dramas with them himself. He wanted to express that he was more concerned with the shaping of language than with the mere communication of content. That is why Dr. Steiner spent years striving to develop the art of recitation, which in turn focuses on the artistic aspect of speech formation. Only in this form can declamation and recitation be combined with eurythmy, with what I would call orchestral unity.