Dear Eurythmists,
Please find enclosed (see PDF below) our program for eurythmy courses within the Section for Performing Arts. During some of the courses there is a possibility to have a short translation into English, even if the courses principally take place in German.
If you have any questions to these courses (or translation), please contact the Section: srmk@goetheanum.ch
With warm regards, Hanna Koskinen
by Jan Ranck
April 1-10, 2016, at Camphill Ballytobin, Ireland
The course is warmly recommended for trained eurythmists, eurythmy therapists, medical doctors and music therapists.
Information and Registration: ginapoole@outlook.com
As space is limited, early registration is recommended.
Inspired by Rudolf Steiner’s indication that tone eurythmy therapy should be developed in addition to speech eurythmy therapy, the eurythmist Lea van der Pals and the medical doctor Margarete Kirchner-Bockholt worked together in the early 1970s to develop a sequence of exercises in connection with the diseases discussed in Rudolf Steiner and Ita Wegman’s book “Extending Practical Medicine”.
This course was taught for many years by Lea van der Pals within various eurythmy therapy trainings, and the effectiveness of the exercises was proven in practice.
When for health reasons Lea van der Pals was prevented from continuing to teach, she passed the torch to Annemarie Baeschlin, who took over holding the course and assisted Lea van der Pals in bringing the material into book form.
At this time Jan Ranck held the practice sessions within Annemarie Baeschlin’s courses, and was also involved with compositional and editorial suggestions for the publication “Ton – Heileurythmie”, Verlag am Goetheanum 1991, published in English in 2009 as “Tone Eurythmy Therapy” by the Medical Section at the Goetheanum.
Jan Ranck did her eurythmy training in Dornach with Lea van der Pals, and her therapeutic eurythmy training in Stuttgart.
She was a faculty member of the Eurythmeum in Dornach and The London School of Eurythmy.
She is the founding director of the Jerusalem Eurythmy Ensemble (1990) and the Jerusalem Academy of Eurythmy (1992), and represents Israel in the International Department of Eurythmy Therapy (“Eurythmy Therapy Forum”).
She is also an instructor in the Jerusalem Waldorf Teacher Bachelor Program in David Yellin Academic College, and a guest teacher in various venues worldwide, including the Goetheanum, and the MA Program in Eurythmy held in Emerson College.
Besides the material mentioned above, Lea van der Pals’ book “The Human Being as Music” (Robinswood Press 1992), published in German in 1969 as “Der Mensch Musik”, is highly recommended as background reading for the course.
Anyone interested in initiating such a course in their own country may contact Jan directly at: jranck@012.net.il
Tuesday, October 13 – Tuesday, October 27, 2015. The Ensemble is heading west this fall to California, Oregon and Washington states! It’s been quite a few years since we traveled to this region, so we are very excited to share our work and get to know the children and faculties in the different communities there. We hope you will pass the word along to anyone you know in these areas that we will soon be traveling their way. For more information about the tour, contact: Sea-Anna Vasilas, ESV Tour Coordinator, esvtour@eurythmy.org. Here are the stops on our tour:
San Francisco Waldorf School, San Francisco, CA:
October 13 – Daytime performances for children
7:30pm Public Evening Program: The Tide Is Turning
Summerfield Waldorf School, Petaluma, CA:
October 15 – Daytime performances for children
October 16 – Daytime performances for children
3:30-4:30pm Public Pedagogical Workshop
7:30 pm Public Evening Performance: The Tide Is Turning
Grass Valley Center for the Arts, Grass Valley, CA:
October 17 – 7pm Public Children’s Performance: The Donkey
8pm Public Evening Performance: The Tide Is Turning
Camphill Communities California, Soquel, CA:
October 19 – 4pm Public Children’s Performance: The Donkey
7:00 pm Public Evening Performance: The Tide Is Turning
Brightwater Waldorf School, Seattle, WA:
October 22 – Daytime performances for children (To be confirmed.)
7pm Public Evening Performance: The Tide Is Turning
Seattle Waldorf School, Seattle, WA:
October 23 – Daytime performances for children
6-9pm Potluck and Public Eurythmy Workshop(To be confirmed.)
Cedarwood Waldorf School, Portland, OR:
October 25 – 1pm Public Children’s Performance: The Donkey
4pm Public Performance: The Tide Is Turning
Portland Waldorf School, Portland, OR:
October 26 – Daytime performances for children (To be confirmed.)
Eugene Waldorf School, Eugene, OR:
October 27 – Daytime performances for children
7:30pm Public Evening Performance: The Tide Is Turning
*All times are subject to change, please check with each venue for specific details
By Leonore Russell
One of the first questions parents ask when they come to learn about a Waldorf school for their child is about the movement art taught in most Waldorf schools: eurythmy. What is it? Why does my child have to do this? After many years of working as a eurythmy teacher and in the administration of a Waldorf schools, I find myself still answering these questions. Yet the answers grow and develop as the years pass and new knowledge both in science and education are bring light to bear on the questions.
First of all, what is eurythmy? It is a movement art, living in the family of movement arts such as mime and ballet yet standing midway between these two arts. It shares meaning and gesture with mime, yet it is married to sound rather than objects or recognizable actions, and shares the moving to music and words with dance, but seeks to follow the invisible movement within sound rather than move to it or juxtapose itself against it. It is the expression of the human soul through gesture and movement.
A student once asked: “who thought this up?” after seeing the same gestures in the great art of the past. He had stumbled on the truth of the expressive gestures that artists such as Giotto and Michelangelo had mastered in their paintings. In the early part of the twentieth century Rudolf Steiner pointed us towards these gestures to learn their meaning and to find a new art of human movement. He worked with first a young girl and then an ever growing group of interested artists to develop this new art of movement. Continue reading