Inspiring Life-long Learning for 25 Years
Tuesday, March 21st, 7:00 p.m.
Please join us in the Orange Room next Tuesday, March 21st, at DaVinci Waldorf School. Led by our visiting Eurythmist, Mark Ebersole, we will do some eurythmy, talk about eurythmy, and answer your questions about eurythmy!
Please sign up by contacting Barbara DuRocher by email or in person in the school office.
Hope to see you there!
Eurythmy in the Waldorf School
by Mark Ebersole
Waldorf Education serves the whole human being—the intellect with living pictures, the soul with living art, and the body with movement, games and activities filled with joy. Eurythmy has been called the “sauce” of Waldorf education, as it does all three, bringing the curriculum into joyous motion through living, beautiful pictures.
Eurythmy was born as a stage art, and teaching it requires four-year, post-graduate, full-time conservatory training. In eurythmy, music is put into motion and is made visible. Speech is likewise made visible. Stories and poems appear in space.
While related to modern dance, eurythmy is not interpretive, and is not an expression of how one feels about a poem or piece of music. Instead, it is the music and speech itself. For every sound in the language and for every tone and interval in music there is a specific, exact gesture. Each gesture can, of course, be done a thousand different ways, depending on the piece.
Those seeing eurythmy for the first time are often reminded of Tai Chi—entirely correctly. Both put the physical body into motion using the chi—the living, flowing life force that surrounds us. Both appear weightless and effortless and flow from the solar plexus of the human being. Eurythmy adds to this, employing the heart center as well—the source of the feeling soul—which fills each gesture with meaning.
Last, but far from least, eurythmy is eminently social. The children learn to move in lightness, expressively, and in unison with each other. Especially in older grades, as the forms become more complicated, they learn to move themselves, and at the same time remain aware of the whole group moving in varied ways around them. Spatial orientation (a 360⁰ relationship with one’s own body) is practiced and mastered.
Skills acquired through the years are so great that children new to Waldorf in the 5th or 6th grades generally take six months to catch up in eurythmy. Even when children do not understand the value of eurythmy as they are learning it, alumni often come back to thank me once they notice the expanded spatial skills they command compared to others.
Are you curious to know more about this art form that your child is learning? Please join us next Tuesday!
