The Rudolf Steiner Archive

7. Eurythmy in Education and Teaching

[ 1 ] Ladies and gentlemen! We would like to present to you a performance of eurythmy—one performed by children—in order to illustrate the educational and didactic value of this art form. Since we are primarily concerned today with the educational and instructional aspects of eurythmy, I will address what needs to be said about eurythmy as an art form in its own right during our next presentation on Wednesday; today, I intend to limit myself to discussing only those aspects that relate to eurythmy as an educational tool and a subject of instruction. I would like to preface this with just a few words to the effect that eurythmy is meant to be a truly inaudible, visible language—a language performed by the moving human being, that is, through the movements of the human limbs, the entire human body, or even expressed by groups of people in space. What appears here as the art of eurythmy—that is, what is achieved on the basis of a visible language—is not an ordinary game of gestures, nor is it anything in the ordinary sense of mimicry, and least of all a dance art; rather, it is a truly careful study of what the human organism seeks to perform, or tends to perform, as it reveals itself in spoken language or song. The movements inherent in the larynx and the other organs of speech and song are transferred to the whole human being according to the principle of Goethe’s metamorphosis; and because we are dealing with human movements that are drawn from the very essence of the human organism in such a natural, elemental way—just as speech is naturally and elementally drawn from the laws governing the human organism— that is why eurythmy is also a means of education and instruction.

[ 2 ] At the Waldorf School founded by Emil Molt in Stuttgart, which I direct, we have therefore introduced eurythmy as a required subject, starting from the earliest grades of elementary school and continuing—as far as the Waldorf School has progressed to date—up to the ages of fourteen and fifteen. And it has already become apparent during the [two-year] existence of the Waldorf School that the children accept this subject with a special inner satisfaction. If one were to set aside the artistic aspect for the moment, one could describe eurythmy in this regard as: animated and spiritually infused gymnastics. And as a subject, it complements ordinary gymnastics precisely as an animated and spiritually infused form of gymnastics. This ordinary gymnastics, after all, is merely systematically organized based on the physiological study of the human organism, on the study of physicality.

[ 3 ] The movements the child performs in eurythmy, however, do not arise solely from this one aspect of human nature—the physical body—but from body, soul, and spirit; that is, from the whole human being. That is why the child also experiences what it is doing there—as animated gymnastics—as something drawn from the whole human being, and it immerses itself in these movements with particular satisfaction.

[ 4 ] If we want to understand how this works, we need only consider how, for someone who, through truly intuitive insight, is able to put themselves in touch with the laws governing the human organism, every possible movement toward which the body tends is already present in the human form at rest. Anyone who can see in this way perceives in the human being at rest how the organism is constantly striving to transition into movements that are already expressed, in terms of their form, in the sculptural or at-rest form. One sets the human form itself in motion simply by making this transition from contemplating the sculptural form of the human organism to the moving sculpture of eurythmy, which is at the same time a visible language. Anyone capable of studying the movements of the human being—which arise from the element of will resolved deep within the subconscious of the will—and these potential movements inherent in the human being will find everywhere that these movements are nothing other than that which, in turn, seeks to come to rest, just as the human organism, when at rest, stands or sits quietly, revealing its tranquil form. One need only look at a hand and the arm attached to it: if one observes the form of the fingers, the forearm, or any other part, one cannot imagine that this should be destined for rest. It is such in its resting form that every possible movement and mobility is already expressed within that resting form.

[ 5 ] And when a person’s arms and hands are in motion, we see that only those movements are naturally and fundamentally possible which, in turn, tend back toward the calm form of the hands and arms themselves.

[ 6 ] The child senses that everything in eurythmy is drawn from the inner laws of the human organism. That is why, as we see at the Stuttgart Waldorf School, the child performs these eurythmic movements with such great enthusiasm, as if they were animated, spiritualized gymnastics.

[ 7 ] And if one looks even more closely at the psychological aspect, one must say: ordinary gymnastics can, in fact, only draw out from a person what lies within their physical constitution. One day, people will think more objectively about these things, free from today’s prejudices. Then people will see just how one-sided ordinary gymnastics really is. I certainly do not wish to go as far as a certain famous physiologist—perhaps even the most famous in Central Europe—who once sat here, listened to such an introduction, and subsequently said to me: “So, you consider gymnastics in general to be a one-sided practice derived from physiology?” “As a physiologist,” he said, “I do not regard gymnastics, as it is practiced today, as a subject of instruction at all, but rather as a barbaric practice.” —

[ 8 ] Well, out of politeness toward our culture—one must always be polite, after all—I will not say that gymnastics is barbaric, but I would like to say: It is one-sided; it is drawn solely from the physiology of the human organism, whereas this animated gymnastics, as it appears in eurythmy, is drawn from body, soul, and spirit—from the whole human being. That is why it is used as a teaching tool, as an educational subject that draws out of the child what the present and future generations in particular will very, very much need, namely, the initiative of the will, the initiative of the soul life.

[ 9 ] This has already been demonstrated in Waldorf schools through eurythmy instruction: how the unfolding of the will and volitional initiative arises from the subconscious depths of human experience during childhood. This has been achieved—because eurythmy does not one-sidedly neglect the physical, focusing only on the soul and spirit, but takes all three elements of human life into account, developing the spirit, developing the soul, and developing the body —so that the child experiences eurythmy as something so natural that, when eurythmy is introduced to the child, the child learns to love it out of the same inner impulse as occurs with speech. Just as with language—when it is introduced to the child, the natural impulse to express language is already present in the child—so too with eurythmy: when it is introduced in a natural way, there is a similar impulse in the child to engage in eurythmy just as in language. And that is why we may hope, my esteemed audience, that eurythmy will be increasingly recognized as an educational tool in the fields of pedagogy and didactics. What is lacking in our time, what our time needs, is for the introduction of eurythmy into the curriculum to be regarded as a matter of course.