Visible Relationships in Space and Time

«That may sound strange», Ulrike Langescheid speculates, «but eurythmy lessons are not about eurythmy itself. Not at all.» She has been giving eurythmy lessons for all age groups for more than 30 years – from kindergarten children to school beginners and teenagers to high school graduates. She also practises with a group of adults. Langescheid has also been a professor of eurythmy education at Alanus College in Alfter since 2007. However, she says that eurythmy is only ever a tool for her, a pedagogical means that serves the development of children and young people, and should therefore not itself be the focus. Eurythmy is much more about placing oneself in space and time. And because we always share both space and time with other people, this also makes our relationships with each other visible – possibly questioning and readjusting them. Ultimately, eurythmy encourages us to be in the right place at the right time within a social structure. And it does so again and again. Because as an art of flowing movements, it is a fleeting, «temporal art», as Langescheid calls it. «This question of the right place at the right time is a fundamental human question that runs through every biography. Every time we do eurythmy, we practise it.» Rehearsing a particular form with a group is perhaps a reflection of life as a whole, which requires our full presence of mind time and time again.

Approaching step by step

How students are introduced to the eurythmic process and go through it during their time at school varies greatly depending on their age. «In the lower school, eurythmy lessons are a communal experience in which the children are essentially immersed in imitation. They playfully slip into the various forms of movement and use them to gain experience with themselves and the group», explains Jakob von Verschuer. He is a eurythmy teacher at the Rudolf Steiner School in Berlin-Dahlem, has also trained as a eurythmy therapist and gives further training courses for colleagues. In the middle school, the external form becomes increasingly important. The students are asked to take hold of themselves and to behave in such a structured way that they can move appropriately to a piece of music or text in interaction with others. Von Verschuer believes that the word manners encompasses much of what eurythmy can do for children in middle school: namely teach them how to walk through the world in a way that corresponds to the people and phenomena around them – without losing themselves. Langescheid has observed that this is often particularly successful for children who also play soccer or another team or group sport at the same time: «To grasp a space, the people in it and the prevailing dynamics and structure at lightning speed and to align their own movement accordingly is something that such children know from the playing field. That's where the ball is, that's where my team is and that's where the other team is, so I take this path and so on. In eurythmy lessons, we practise forming appropriate structures – of the music, of the content, of the group – releasing them and forming new structures again.» Sometimes the children can also see this parallel themselves and then build a bridge from soccer to eurythmy – and vice versa. «In the upper school, they are then equipped with so many tools that they can give themselves a form, create anew and improvise», concludes eurythmy teacher von Verschuer. However, the step-by-step approach to eurythmy should by no means be static; the others must shine into each phase, he emphasizes.  «The independent approach to eurythmy must be practiced from the very beginning, otherwise the students will not be able to establish their own relationship to eurythmy. Then eurythmy will always remain tied to the teacher and if, for example, the students legitimately want to distance themselves from me as a teacher at some point, then this also creates a distance to the subject of eurythmy. That's why it's important that they have already developed their own approach to the forms of movement from within.»

Showing oneself, being authentic

Filling the forms from within – that is important. Because eurythmy can be that too: A means of expression for an individual and their relationship to the world. Langescheid illustrates this with a paradox that puberty brings with it and that eurythmy is always able to resolve: «On the one hand, students in these years feel a great need to be seen and recognized. They need a counterpart who can read who they really are. On the other hand, they hardly want to be looked at, are insecure and find it difficult to withstand stares. Forms of space and coordination in eurythmy can offer a real protective space. They are sober, clean, clear – and yet intimate.» A «culture of sensitive self-expression» can be established if students practise eurythmy throughout their entire time at school. And that, in turn, is an important basis for establishing and maintaining any kind of relationship. «We always take ourselves with us. The better we know ourselves and the more authentic we are, the more human it is», von Verschuer is convinced. Center and periphery are the magic words for his colleague Langescheid in this respect. «I am always the center. That has to be me. That is important. All other people form the periphery for my center. But my center is only the center of my world. And what appears to me as the periphery are all other centers», she explains. Von Verschuer argues that younger students should be allowed to build up their own center with egotism. «I have to be able to recognize, name and communicate needs and feelings in order to be able to deal with them better later on. Childhood egotism is therefore a necessary transitional form», he says.

Ruptures as a motif

That is why there are basically no texts and no music that cannot be processed eurythmically. At least neither Langescheid nor von Verschuer want to draw such a line. «But it can happen that I can't think of anything at all for what the students bring to me. Then we have no basis and therefore can't work. But that could be very different for my colleague», says Langescheid, recalling her last twelfth grade class. The students had become so fond of an exercise they had learned in fifth grade that they wanted to continue working with it in all subsequent years. And finally, this exercise was also to become an integral part of the eurythmy graduation at the end of their time at school. The students wanted to put the old familiar to current techno. «I was skeptical», admits Langescheid, but then explains how it was precisely the breaks in the choreography that took them away. «Lyrics and music hardly went together. But it was precisely these ruptures that the young people picked up on and worked with. They were the actual motif of the production. And this motif had to do with them. These were the biographical ruptures that they had experienced themselves up to that point. And that's why I found it absolutely convincing and coherent in the end.»

Experience as a source

Langescheid and von Verschuer are certain that there is no such thing as one single form of eurythmy. «There are gestures for sounds, for moods and so on. These are tools that the students can develop. Ultimately, however, it's always about conveying something internal to the outside world and this sometimes requires new gestures and new forms», summarizes von Verschuer. Langescheid adds: «The source of a movement is always an experience. And there are countless of these in every human life and in every phase of life, every day». Conversely, a movement itself can also become an experience. But if Langescheid and von Verschuer have their way, young people can forget everything they have ever learned about eurythmy at the end of their school years. After all, it's not about eurythmy, it's all about how young people relate to themselves and the world.