Working Together in the Sections

Reviewed by Alice Stamm

Sacramento, California

Often eurythmists are the ones who initiate a performance, having gone to a speech artist or to musicians with a wish to work on a particular poem or piece of music. So, performances come about and a wonderful working together takes place. More musicians have come to me to ask, what would this look like in eurythmy? It is always a delight to be asked to make visible what we usually enjoy audibly.

In the introduction to a eurythmy performance at the beginning of the Foundation Stone conference in 1923, Rudolf Steiner brings a new picture of eurythmy in performance with speaker and eurythmist and audience. Eurythmy had accompanied the building of the first Goetheanum, its forms and all artistic aspects. This imaginative quality and power of this new art form was vital for this building’s development and almost completion. Eurythmy itself was imbued anew with this, making it possible for the Foundation Stone to be performed for the first time on April 20, 1924.

Dr. Steiner gives a new picture of what is happening during a performance, knowing this can only inspire our relation to performing, deepening our working with such materials. There he speaks about what we otherwise know along the Rosicrucian path of development, from living thinking to imagination, inspiration, and intuition.

In the introduction, Dr. Steiner speaks about the relation between speaker and eurythmist. In a performance one has the possibility to experience the mystery behind the artistry of speaker and eurythmist. The audience is addressed as well. For in the performance, he relates how the eurythmists create imaginations in doing eurythmy to the speaker’s recitation; inspiration is evident; and the audience experiences the intuitive element of what is performed.

This moment of the laying in our hearts of the Foundation Stone, one sees how a truly esoteric deepening is given, even in the realm of eurythmy and performance. Rudolf Steiner has indicated that the Masters who care for western esotericism are Christian Rosenkreutz and Master Jesus. Throughout his life and work, Dr. Steiner always made room for or allowed Christian Rosenkreutz’s impulses to inspire his own endeavors in bringing Anthroposophia to work in the world. The Rosicrucian impulses had always to do with the artistic, lifting the material into the gesture of the spiritual.

So too in eurythmy performance, there was an open secret of spiritual reality.

When Ilona Schubert asked Dr. Steiner what the C and R meant in the prelude to the fourth panel of the Foundation Stone in eurythmy, and then R, C in the silent conclusion, he answered Chrisrian Rosenkreutz and Rose Cross. And in the eurythmy form For Rudolf Steiner by Christian Morgenstern, the prelude sounds are IRAM and afterward MARI. So too open secrets acknowledge one’s teacher.

In our little community here in Fair Oaks, California, our dear speaker Margit Ilgen has been living with the 23rd Psalm. Her inspiration is that this must be done in eurythmy! She asked one eurythmist and then a second, and then a third to come together to build an imagination of this Psalm. And at some point, we plan to perform it as part of a festival here. It was a magic moment to be asked.

Something similar could be happening in the Literary Arts Section work here. The heart of the Section here has been sharing poetry written by our members, and some of these poems could be done in eurythmy. Every day we are grateful for this art of making something visible, and with others I feel that we come closer to the Logos of our work.

Through their research at the Goetheanum, Stefan Hasler and Martina Maria Sam have been able to show something of Dr. Steiner’s process as a whole. One can see similarities in the notes to the other lectures given at the same time, in Curative Education and the Karma lectures. This shows the amazing amount of work done by Dr. Steiner at the time.

Stefan is sharing this work with training centers that he visits, as well as during conferences at the Goetheanum. These results are to be found in the latest editions of both cycles, in German initially, and possibly to be translated. They intend to bridge the early eurythmists’ work and traditions with what is possible now through individual initiatives and work. This looking into Rudolf Steiner’s workshop (kitchen it was called) can help to unite with the original spiritual impulse of eurythmy and awaken new interest in this art. And this leads to a joy in discovery and wonder at what lies in eurythmy.

I can imagine more joy would come in studying this material with others, trying out and comparing what is new or what deepens the work and experience. To work together on these discoveries is future language forming.

Alice Stamm has been teaching eurythmy since 1975. She began her eurythmy training in Eckwalden, Germany, and finished with Else Klink in Stuttgart. Alice also trained in therapeutic eurythmy, receiving a diploma from the Goetheanum in Dornach, Switzerland. Having moved back to the States in 1978, she taught in several eurythmy trainings, Waldorf schools and performed eurythmy in Spring Valley, Kimberton, Chicago, on the west coast in Los Angeles and Fair Oaks. Alice is on the faculty of Gradalis Waldorf Consulting and Services, LLC. Alice is a founding member of the Eurythmy Association of North America, which she began with six other colleagues in 1979. She also helped to form the Section Collegium for the Performing Arts in North America in 1988.