Newsletter from the Performing Arts Section Easter 2015 FOREWORD Dear newsletter readers, dear colleagues I started as the new head of the Section for the Performing Arts in January. This means that I now have the opportunity to meet people, to get to know initiatives and to take a new look at many situations. I am eager to see what will develop and curious to discover more about the quality of Section life, whether individuals in their own community feel that their work is part of the Section or not and what kind of collaboration and support is needed today. In any case I want to ask all of you to get in touch at any time to let me know your suggestions, your wishes and requests, your criticisms: I am simply curious! Every ‘newbie’ is also given the opportunity to question the status quo in a quite new and perhaps ‘stupid’ way, so I am letting you know that the newsletter from the next issue will change in appearance. In exchange with Silke Kollewijn, Hanna Koskinen, Michael Kurtz and Marcel Sorge we have for now come to the following decisions: The newsletter will continue to contain: • substantial contributions relating to aspects of eurythmy, Creative Speech and music • reports with a broad, long-term perspective (and that will therefore still be of interest in years to come) • some biographies of those who have died • current discussions on themes relating to specific subjects • questions about the Section: what are the different ideas of the Section? How does the Section live? What can we share with each other on this theme in the forum that this newsletter offers? The newsletter will no longer contain: • appointments and announcements. We very much hope that you will agree that these dates and announcements will in future only be found on the Section website. And this is where we would like to publicise the links to the websites on which the events are originally publicised. Please get in touch to let us know about your events and send the corresponding links to another website or websites. • the material published in ‘Auftakt’ (Germany/Switzerland/Austria only) • the material published in ‘Stil’ A free sample copy of this quarterly magazine for Goetheanism, published by the three art Sections, can be requested from the Verlag Am Goetheanum: please write to [email protected] We really want to stimulate professional exchange between colleagues, so we would love to know how many musicians read this newsletter, and therefore whether we should be requesting more articles for this situation. We have also discovered that many colleagues either do not read the newsletter or do not know about it. To address this, we will be sending the autumn newsletter as a specimen copy to anyone interested. Please let us know whether there is anyone you know to whom we can send it. We would also very much like to invite you send us your further wishes and ideas to [email protected] so that the next step can be a joint undertaking. I am looking forward to the coming collaboration, to the coming encounters, and wish in conclusion to sincerely apologise to English-speaking readers for the delayed appearance of this English version. Stefan Hasler TABLE OF CONTENTS Topical Forum From the Activities of the Working Group for Eurythmy in Social Care (Andrea Heidekorn) News from the West Midlands Eurythmy Association (Maren Stott & Rita Kort) Articles From the Father to the Son and the First Eurythmy Exercises (Sivan Karnieli) Eurythmy: A Contemporary Experience of the Threshold to the Imagination (Kaspar Zett) Separating Movement and Speech in Eurythmy and the Positive Effects on Imitation (Sabine Deimann) Speech – An Invisible Creation in the Air The Art of Speech, Eurythmy and Flow Research (Serge Maintier) Bricks That Bridge the ‘Here’ and ‘There’ On the Late Dramatic Writings of Nelly Sachs (Christian Maurer, Berlin) How Can Eurythmy Help the Bees? (Gudrun Gundersen) Reports Eurytmea – A part-time training in Bohemia and Moravia finishing in the summer of 2015 (Angelika Storch) 10 Years of the European B.A., A Practical Educational Eurythmy Training in the Netherlands (Helga Daniel) A Swiss Youth Eurythmy Festival (Katinka Penert) Impressions of a Creative Speech Artist Contributing to the BA in Eurythmy in the Netherlands (Gabriele Ruhnau) Working with Creative Speech in Russia (Suzanne Breme) Obituaries Eva Froböse – A Life in Service to Eurythmy (1915 – 2015) (Johannes Starke) Elisabeth von Stockar: The Course of Her Life (1919 – 2014) Events oft he Section Eurythmy – Speech – Music – Figure Players Announcements Eurythmy – Speech – Music Publications & Reviews ‘On My Own Eurythmy Teaching’ Further Reflections as an Appendix to a Research Project From Research at the Alanus University for Art and Society (Elisabeth Göbel) Sergei O. Prokofieff The Michael Mystery Reflections from a spiritual-scientific perspective on The Michael Imagination and Its Presentation in Eurythmy (Barbara Mraz, Berlin) On the new and updated edition of Marie Steiner – Traces of the Life of an Individuality by Wilfried Hammacher (Elisabeth Göbel) Letter to Wilfried Hammacher (Robert Schmidt) “Up on a beautiful forest heath there stands ...” (Silke Kollewijn) TOPICAL FORUM From the Activities of the Working Group for Eurythmy in Social Care Andrea Heidekorn The working group for eurythmy in social care meets three times a year in the Section for the Performing Arts with the aim of creating a vessel for those eurythmists working in a social environment. These are mostly individuals working freelance who have no connection with other colleagues and are working in public or in more than one organisation. The development of colleagueship and of networks offering mutual support is extremely important for each of these individual eurythmists. Stefan Hasler, the new head of the Performing Arts Section, has been accompanying the work of the group and dealing with topical questions. Werner Barfod, the founder of the working group, enriches the group study sessions with insights into esoteric issues relating to social hygiene. Wolf-Ulrich Klünker has been a member of the group for three years; he makes contributions out of anthroposophy and presents perspectives relevant to both contemporary and social issues. As the pioneer in the field of eurythmy in the workplace, Annemarie Ehrlich is an attentive and a surprisingly progressive initiator. Rachel Maeder is artistically active in very many social fields and represents the Swiss professional association. Elisabeth Rieger presents issues relating to the potential field of conflict between eurythmy therapy and the social sphere. She, Rebecca Ristow and Cristi Heisterkamp make up the team actively carrying the German professional association. It is especially important to Cristi Heisterkamp for eurythmy and anthroposophy to become socially competent in public and for eurythmists to develop their contribution to contemporary spirituality. Mona Lenzen works in the fields of education and social care. Among other responsibilities Andrea Heidekorn is the contact person for the MA course at the Alanus University for Art and Society. She also carries responsibility for the development and organisation of conferences and for publications. Perceiving and deepening questions with inner substance and content is at the heart of the group’s work. This includes deepening an understanding of anthroposophy as a central working resource for eurythmy and making it more concrete and topical and revealing a vast variety of methods as working resources. The group also engages with social and contemporary historical themes: these supply the framework and the necessity for its specific work. In January our main theme was the question: What are we doing in our work with eurythmy in the social care environment today that is different to what we were doing two years ago? The main thing that had changed for Mona Lenzen was her approach to her teaching: ‘From the perspective of didactics I ask myself what I will be doing. From the perspective of teaching methods I ask myself what methods and means I will be using, i.e. how I will be conveying in specific situations the ‘what’ to people. The same theme, whether they are sound movements, sentence gestures, etc.: speaks to people in different ways if I use different teaching methods. So it is important to have a lot of different methods in one’s “baggage” so that one is prepared for as many situations as possible.’ We are currently experiencing more fluidity in the methods used. Mona Lenzen continued: ‘Advance planning gets me going, but not through the class. I need to be totally awake and inwardly flexible in the situation, ready to change many things in the moment. That requires, alongside my inner mobility, a total inner presence. And my educational work in school profits from what I learn and develop in my artistic work in a social care environment’ A good training will help to find an authentic and contemporary way of working with eurythmy: ‘I can only know what I know in the moment. But I have the foundations and that makes my work strong and authentic. I no longer beat myself up about the fact that I cannot have everything beforehand.’ Elisabeth Rieger continued: ‘I can no longer pass on or teach eurythmy without explaining the context. Why are we doing what? And then it is important to express oneself simply and at the same time specifically.’ Annemarie Ehrlich described: ‘I like opening all my eurythmy classes, including to non-eurythmists. They can help us to learn what language to use.’ And Elisabeth Rieger added: ‘For me it is about creating the context: it is important that something breathes between people, both in eurythmy and in the organisational development of an institution, for example… it is about what can develop in those participating, whether or not they are anthroposophists.