The Contemporary Context of Gurdjieff's Movements

Religion and the Arts 21 (2017) 96–122 RELIGION and the ARTS brill.com/rart

The Contemporary Context of Gurdjieff’s Movements

Carole M. Cusack* University of Sydney

Abstract

The “sacred dances” or “Movements” were first revealed by George Ivanovitch Gurdjieff (c. 1866–1949) in 1919 in Tiflis (Tblisi), the site of the first foundation of his Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man. The proximate cause of this new teaching technique has been hypothesized to be Jeanne de Salzmann (1889–1990), an instructor of the Eurhythmics method of music education developed by Émile Jaques-Dalcroze (1865–1950). Jeanne and her husband Alexandre met at Jaques-Dalcroze’s Institute at Hellerau in 1913, and became pupils of Gurdjieff in 1919. It was to her Dalcroze class that Gurdjieff first taught Movements. Esoteric systems of dance and musical education proliferated at the time. Gurdjieff was deeply interested in music, theater, and art. When Pyotr Demianovich Ouspensky (1878–1947) met him in 1915 he spoke of dances he had seen in Eastern temples, and was working on a never-performed ballet, The Struggle of the Magicians. This article argues that body-based disciplines introduced by esoteric teachers with Theosophically-inflected systems are a significant phenomenon in the early twentieth century and that Gurdjieff’s Movements, while distinct from other dance systems, emerged in the same esoteric melting-pot and manifest common features and themes with the esoteric dance of Rudolf Steiner, Rudolf von Laban, Peter Deunov, and others.

Keywords

G. I. Gurdjieff – Movements – Rudolf Steiner – Eurythmy – Émile Jaques-Dalcroze –

* Thanks are due to my research assistant, Venetia Robertson, who assisted with library searches and note-taking for this article. Gratitude is also due to Donald Barrett, whose patience with my research projects is greatly appreciated.

Eurhythmics – Rudolf von Laban – Movement Choir – Peter Deunov – Paneurhythmy – Sergei Diaghilev – Vaslav Nijinsky – The Rite of Spring

Music and dance have been integral to humanity’s religious and spiritual cultural production from the earliest times. All peoples throughout history and around the globe have made music with both the human voice and musical instruments, be they as simple as sticks and stones, or as complex as piano and sitar. Music and dance are embodied practices, and are among the cultural products that are accorded the status of “art.” In recent years, scholars have posited a link between the experience of aesthetic pleasure and evolutionary biology, with philosopher Stephen Davies in The Artful Species: Aesthetics, Art and Evolution proposing that art and aesthetics optimized the process of evolution for humans (45). Art is closely related to religion in that both are human cultural products, and many artistic forms appear to have originated in, or early on became subordinated to, religious rituals (Cusack, “Religion-Making” 98). Art is difficult to define, but is here understood to be “the expression of any ideal that the artist can realize in plastic form” (Read 23). This links art to religion as both are aspirational cultural products that focus on aesthetic ideals and moral and ethical ideals respectively, and have the effect of driving human optimiza- tion due to their attractive and inspirational qualities (Hanna 284). However, in the post-Reformation West much of the ritual tradition and artistic expression was excised from Protestant Christianity, though it remains influential in the Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches, which retain complex iconography and liturgy (Michalski passim). The Reformation was also a major event in the development of modern Western selfhood, which is individualistic and views self-transformation as the principal, or indeed the only, spiritual aim. The transformation of the West from medieval Catholicism through the Protestant Reformation to the contemporary secular modernity involved, among other things, a relativization of Christianity, which in the Middle Ages was the dominant, and for most people effectively the only, form of religion. Brad Gregory argues that the radical change between the fifteenth century and the present can be mapped across six domains: first, the exclusion of God from explanatory discourses; second, plu- ralism and the relativization of Christian doctrines; third, the ways in which states and legal bodies took control of the institutional churches in modernity; fourth, the subjectivization of morality; fifth, the growth of consumerism and of the notion that “things” will make people happy and fulfilled; and sixth, the secularization of knowledge (1–24). In the eighteenth century, the Enlighten- ment promoted human reason and empirical experience as sources of knowl-

Religion and the Arts 21 (2017) 96–122 Downloaded from Brill.com09/27/2021 05:02:49PM via free access 98 cusack edge superior to religious revelation, and its concomitant emotional revolution, Romanticism, appreciated beauty in the physical world and rejected the doctrine of original sin in favor of the natural goodness and virtue of human beings (Barzun 115–131). In the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries a new kind of society emerged, industrial and secular, and with it a new attitude to physical activity developed. The clergyman, novelist, and social reformer Charles Kingsley (1819–1875) advocated “muscular Christianity,” a manly and physically robust conception of Jesus, which caused sport and physical exercise to become popular. The famous educator Thomas Arnold (1795–1842) developed a model of sports education at Rugby, the elite boys’ boarding school of which he was headmaster. The founder of the modern Olympic Games, Pierre de Coubertin (1863–1937), visited Rugby in 1883 and afterwards espoused pedagogie sportive in France (Hill 5). By the early twentieth century “a more wholesome education brought about through … sport and gymnastics, the observance of hygiene, and plenty of fresh air” (Robinson 29) resulted in dance becoming a popular and widespread phenomenon in the modern West. Prior to modernity, dancing took place in formal, courtly contexts, as an accomplishment valued by the upper classes, or as a peasant recreation. Modern dance was quite unlike either of these forms, and focused on “the cult of Nature … the pursuit of harmony, and a kind of primitive simplicity that may be misunderstood as a return to Antiquity. All this was expressed with a greater or lesser degree of emphasis, sentimentality or mysticism” depending on the dancer or teacher (Robinson 29). The experience of alienation in industrial society and the trauma of World War i were two proximate causes of a plethora of body-based disciplines that emerged in the early twentieth century (29–30). These practices were viewed as an antidote to the Christian repression of sexuality and sensuality, and also to the soullessness of mechanized modern life. There were intellectual developments in the early twentieth century which conferred legitimacy on “experiential learning and sensory research,” including the psychology of Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung, and Wilhelm Reich, the phe- nomenology of Maurice Merleau-Ponty and existentialist philosophy, and the educational theories of Heinrich Jacoby and John Dewey (Eddy 6).The encoun- ter of East and West in religion and spirituality is another important theme of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. When Gurdjieff’s Move- ments are examined the place of Eurythmy, devised in 1912 by the former Theosophist and founder of Anthroposophy, Rudolf Steiner (1861–1925) is cru- cial (Barnes 107–108). Steiner’s movement art, developed in partnership with his second wife Marie von Sivers and (to a lesser extent) the early Eurythmy instructor Lory Maier-Smits, is the first of its kind—an esoteric movement art

Religion and the Arts 21 (2017) 96–122 Downloaded from Brill.com09/27/2021 05:02:49PM via free access the contemporary context of gurdjieff’s movements 99 directed toward spiritual advancement. Admittedly, Jaques-Dalcroze, a teacher at the Geneva Conservatory, had devised and demonstrated the Eurhythmic method of learning music in 1905 and founded school to teach Eurhythmics at Hellerau in Germany in 1910 (Sadler 11–14). This was, however, not an esoteric art, but rather directed to secular music education. Steiner, too, founded an institute, at Dornach near Basel in Switzerland, which is now the headquar- ters of the Anthroposophical Society. This and Jacques-Dalcroze’s foundation (and possibly the various centers of the Theosophical Society) may have influenced Gurdjieff’s foundation of the Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man in 1919. Two other important teachers of esoteric dance are also brought into the context of the Movements. The first is the Bulgarian mystic Peter Deunov (Beinsa Douno, 1864–1944), who created a dance form called Paneurhythmy that is reminiscent of folk circle dancing, from the 1920s onward (Lorimer, Cir- cle of Sacred Dance 15–25).The second is a teacher who is usually situated in the secular history of dance, Rudolf von Laban (1879–1958). He is best known for his physical system Laban Movement Analysis (lma), and Labanotation (or kinetographie), the notation he devised to record physical activity (Matluck Brooks 30). Laban also founded a school in Switzerland 1913 on Monte Verità (Mount Truth) at Ascona where a colony of “life reformers” including vegetarians, com- munists, and other spiritual seekers had existed since 1900 (Dörr, Rudolf Laban 29). He developed “Movement Choir,” a combination of ensemble dancing and singing based on his spiritual beliefs, which were derived from Hermeticism, Freemasonry, Sufism, and Theosophy (67–69). The final possible influence on the Movements noted here is the 1913 Paris debut of the Ballets Russes’s The Rite of Spring, under Sergei Diaghilev, which was choreographed by Vaslav Nijinsky with a score by Igor Stravinsky. This ballet is relevant in terms of its musical and dance forms, “screeching and dissonant in sound, violently in movements” (Kennel 4), and its content, a “pagan” ritual in which a chosen virgin is sacrificed (Garafola 69–72), and because the Theosophical artist Nikolai Roerich (1874–1947) was involved with its stage and costume design. After the Russian Revolution, Roerich and his wife Helena moved to Finland in 1918. The Roerichs founded an esoteric school called Agni Yoga in England in 1920, and later traveled to India, Tibet, Mongolia, China, and other exotic locations (McCannon 166–167).

Religion and the Arts 21 (2017) 96–122 Downloaded from Brill.com09/27/2021 05:02:49PM via free access 100 cusack i George Ivanovitch Gurdjieff and the Movements

G. I. Gurdjieff is one of the three most important teachers in modern esotericism, with his older contemporary Madame Helena Blavatsky (1831–1891), co- founder of theTheosophical Society, and Rudolf Steiner, founder of the Anthro- posophical Society. Yet Gurdjieff and the “Work” (as his tradition is known) have attracted far less academic attention than Theosophy or Anthroposophy. Gurdjieff’s life is difficult to research, as questions arise regarding his birthdate, his journeys as a seeker of spiritual knowledge, and the sources of the teaching he disseminated from 1912 onwards, first in Russia, and later in France and America. However, Paul Beekman Taylor has “uncovered the fact that Soviet trial records from 1927 state that Gurdjieff had been head of a Masonic temple in 1909, and that Nikolai Roerich had been a member of the same temple” (Azize, “Biographical Studies” 26). This confirms the view gained from Gur- djieff’s writings, that he was well-acquainted with Western esotericism in its Masonic and Theosophical forms. Sacred dances were a theme in Gurdjieff’s teaching from the start. In “Glimpses of The Truth” (1914), an early text that was possibly written to attract students, a seeker asked about The Struggle of the Magicians, which Gurdjieff had advertised. In his response Gurdjieff linked dance to the cosmological laws he had spoken of earlier:

in the rhythm of certain dances, in the precise movements and combinations of the dancers, certain laws are vividly recalled. Such dances are called sacred. During my journeys in the East, I often saw dances of this kind executed during the performance of sacred rotes in some of the ancient temples. These ceremonies are inaccessible and unknown to Europeans. Some of these dances are reproduced in The Struggle of the Magicians. gurdjieff, Views 31

However, the ballet was never produced, and Gurdjieff began introducing dance to his pupils in Essentuki in 1917 or 1918 (Azize “Sacred Dances” 301). The first time he taught a dance class not comprised of his pupils was in Tiflis in 1919; the class was Jeanne de Salzmann’s Dalcroze students, and they later gave a public demonstration of the Movements. The sources or origins of the Move- ments have been hypothesized to come from the monastery of the unidenti- fied “Sarmoung Brotherhood,” or more critically, a combination of Eastern and Western dance forms, including Sufi dervish dances and Dalcroze Eurhythmics (Wellbeloved 45). It was at the mysterious monastery that Gurdjieff hypotheti-

Religion and the Arts 21 (2017) 96–122 Downloaded from Brill.com09/27/2021 05:02:49PM via free access the contemporary context of gurdjieff’s movements 101 cally saw a doll-like machine consisting “of a vertical column fitted with seven movable arms, each attached by seven universal joints. Like a written alphabet, the machine was capable of transmitting an infinite number of sign combinations” (Gordon 38). This exotic explanation has never been substantiated, and it seems more likely that, as Gurdjieff noted, when he was young he had “prac- tised mostly Yoga and the gymnastics of the ‘Swede Mueller.’”1 Wim van Dullemen has suggested that the forms of Gurdjieff’s teaching, the music, Movements, and his writings, can be regarded as a Gesamtkunstwerk (total work of art), with the unifying feature being that “they all have hid- den content” (32). He argues that there are two Movements that are possible survivals from The Struggle of the Magicians, “The Great Prayer” and number twenty-five in the “39 Series” (thirty-four in the “American 39” series), which actually contains forty-six Movements (48–49). Van Dullemen, a long time practitioner of Movements both inside and outside the “official” Foundation, discovered when he had been studying Movements for a decade, that they were only fragments of Movements or very simple ones. He visited the elderly members of the Study Society (a Gurdjieff group founded by Francis Roles) in England and witnessed a version of “The Great Prayer” that convinced him that there were multiple traditions or lineages in Movements teaching. He believed he knew “The Great Prayer,” but states:

the stylized and geometric positions as I knew them were transformed no this occasion to far more lively gestures, some more graceful, others more solemn. The gestures left the deepest impression on me that expressed doubt or despair and in such a way, powerfully and moving, that I had never seen before. 162–163

He notes that Gurdjieff taught Movements in two very different times and under different conditions. The first period ended in 1924 when his Institute at the Prieuré des Basses Loges in Fontainebleau-Avon, south of Paris, was dis- banded after he had a near-fatal car accident. During the early period, Gurdjieff and Thomas de Hartmann composed music to accompany each Movement. Thomas De Hartmann was a classically trained composer who with his wife,

1 van Dullemen 215. There are two possible figures that this might refer to, the first is Georg Friedrich Mueller who founded an institute in Germany in 1849, and the second is the Dane L. P. Muller, the so-called “Apostle of Health,” who was active slightly later (van Dullemen 215). The fact that neither of them are Swedes may or may not be an issue.

Religion and the Arts 21 (2017) 96–122 Downloaded from Brill.com09/27/2021 05:02:49PM via free access 102 cusack aristocratic opera singer Olga Arkadievna de Schumacher, left Russia with Gur- djieff in 1917 (Petsche, Gurdjieff and Music 72–73). Gurdjieff composed two types of music with de Hartmann, music for Movements, and piano music that falls into three types: “Asian and Eastern Folk Music, Sayyid and Dervish Music, and Hymns” (112). Interestingly, in light of the reception of TheRiteof Spring discussed later, the Gurdjieff/de Hartmann music was often experienced as discordant or difficult to relate to. The de Hartmanns left Gurdjieff on his orders in 1929 (Thomas) and 1930 (Olga), and the later Movements did not have music to accompany them, though there is greater use of speech, including “Lord Have Mercy” and “Alleluia” (Azize 307). Gurdjieff evidently understood dance, or movement systems, very well and he taught Jeanne de Salzmann’s class in a systematic, not improvisatory, fashion.The script of The Struggle of the Magicians describes the dances taught by theWhite Magician to his students, including the heroine, the virtuous and beautiful Zeinab. This is clearly a Movements class:

[i]mmediately the pupils leave their work and place themselves in rows, and at a sign from the Magician they go through various movements resembling dances. The Magician’s assistant moves up and down and cor- rects their postures and movements. These “sacred dances” are considered to be one of the principal subjects of study in all esoteric schools of the East, both in ancient times and at the present day. The movements of which these dances consist have a double purpose; they express and con- tain a certain knowledge and, at the same time, they serve as a method of attaining a harmonious state of being. Combinations of these movements express different sensations, produce varying degrees of concentration of thought, create necessary efforts in different functions and show the possible limits of individual force. gurdjieff, Struggle 19

Gurdjieff’s pupils placed great emphasis on learning Movements, and after his death the Foundation, headed by Jeanne de Salzmann, jealously guarded them. However, as van Dullemen shows, there are unofficial lines of transmission that mean that Roles’s Study Society, the lineage created by John Godolphin Bennett (1897–1974),and many other groups, have access to Movements choreographies and may preserve important versions that the Foundation does not have. The later period of teaching Movements commenced in 1937 when Jeanne de Salzmann presented to Gurdjieff members of her Sèvres group.That group con- tained several important future Movements teachers: Marthe de Gaigneron, Henriette Lannes, and Pauline de Dampierre. The last Movement Gurdjieff

Religion and the Arts 21 (2017) 96–122 Downloaded from Brill.com09/27/2021 05:02:49PM via free access the contemporary context of gurdjieff’s movements 103 choreographed was in 1949, only a few weeks before he died. Pauline de Dam- pierre in a 1985 interview explained that Gurdjieff’s notion of “objective art” was an ideal that those practicing Movements held in mind:

while the movements were being performed, the aim was not to create a work of art. I would add that not one of the dancers ever thought of himself as an artist; not one considered himself a specialist in sacred dance … Gurdjieff had a very lofty idea of what he called objective art. One of its characteristics is that it has the same effect on everyone … It’s not the ambition of those who study these movements to create a work of this sort; but in the course of their practice, sometimes a very special phenomenon occurs. It may happen that everything comes together so perfectly, with such a shared understanding, that their differences disap- pear. One doesn’t notice one or another person any more … this possibility opens only at moments. de dampierre 180

The final part of this section on Gurdjieff considers the Enneagram Move- ments, of which there are approximately twenty (van Dullemen 189). These refer to Gurdjieff’s symbol, the Enneagram, the name of which is derived from Greek ennea (nine) and grammos (written or drawn). It is a nine-sided figure, usually shown as a triangle within a circle (connecting points 9, 3, and 6). The most detailed information about the Gurdjieff Enneagram is in Ous- pensky’s In Search of the Miraculous (1949), which is a purportedly verbatim account of Gurdjieff’s teachings. The Enneagram is a circle containing a six- sided shape and an equilateral triangle. The circumference of the circle is divided into nine equal parts, and the resultant nine points are numbered from 1 to 9 clockwise, with the 9 in the ‘12 o’clock’ position. The numbers exemplify the Law of Seven (which in Gurdjieff is the musical octave, containing seven basic notes and two ‘semitone’ intervals, equalling nine points). The points representing the seven fundamental notes are labelled do, re, mi and so on (Ouspensky 289). The Law of Seven orders all the processes in the universe, and Gurdjieff demonstrated this idea through the “seven-tone scale.” The scale consisted of two sets of larger intervals—do re mi and fa sol la ti—and two smaller intervals, between mi and fa, and si and the do of the next octave (Ous- pensky 124–126; Gurdjieff, Views 187–189). Gurdjieff taught that in all processes resistance occurs at the small intervals, and extra energy or a ‘shock’ is required for the processes to continue. Johanna J.M. Petsche, a scholar of Gurdjieff and music, has studied Movements for some years and notes that the Enneagram and Multiplications Movements are related, as

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in a typical Multiplication Movement six practitioners stand in a row and each represent the numbers 1, 4, 2, 8, 5, and 7. Points 3, 6, and 9 of the enneagram are not represented. In a Multiplication, practitioners move forward and back across the floor, not only changing gestures involving the arms and hands, but changing places in the row (these changes of position are called ‘displacements’) in accordance with the numerical patterns given when the numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 are divided by 7. petsche, “Sacred Dance” 65

Her experience of learning the Movement called Enneagram 5 included the relative simplicity of walking around the circumference of the Enneagram, compared to the complexity of learning the six turns that were completed when crossing the inner lines, with no variation, despite the fact that the “lines joining points 2 and 8, and 7 and 1 are longer than the other lines” (68). Petsche states that travelling through the enneagram breaks the mechanical modes of thinking, and when participants returned to their original points on the periphery “conscious effort, attention and observation are … forced on practitioners during this process; there is a sense that something has been achieved and developed” (70). Petsche concludes that Enneagram 5 clearly references the two fundamental principles of Gurdjieff, the Laws of Three and Seven. In the Law of Three the reconciling force nullifies the opposition of affirming and denying, and the Law of Seven governs all processes in the universe. The meaning of that philosophical interaction connects with “the intimate and inevitable interplay between the six moving practitioners and the three sitting practitioners, we well as sensations of alertness, coordination and heightening of awareness that comes from the precision and attention required in order to move through the intricate enneagrammatic pattern” (72–73). Movements, it seems, enabled Gurdjieff’s pupils to unify their three centers, intellect, emotions, and body, in order to develop a soul or kesdjan body. In Gurdjieff’s system, humans align their intellectual, emotional, and sensory selves into a single self through the development of a soul (which people, who effectively do not exist, do not have unless they work to grow one). This known as the development of a finer (or kesdjan) body. Gurdjieff’s teachings are often called “The Fourth Way,” because of his illustration of the three ways that are connected to the three centers of being. The way of the fakir (Sufi ascetic) Gurdjieff connects to the body and the sensory center; the way of the monk (Christian renunciant) he connects to the emotional center; and the way of the yogi (Hindu ascetic) he connects with the intellectual center. But all these paths are inadequate, as they “are all imbalanced because each center is only aware of part of what we are … So in

Religion and the Arts 21 (2017) 96–122 Downloaded from Brill.com09/27/2021 05:02:49PM via free access the contemporary context of gurdjieff’s movements 105 effect, there are two kinds of imbalance … individual neurosis (derived from the fact that centers try to do the work that is proper to one of the others) and ‘spiritual lopsidedness’ (derived from the fact that no center can reveal the whole nature of man)” (Rawlinson 288). ii Émile Jaques-Dalcroze and Eurhythmics

The technique that Jaques-Dalcroze devised to teach students embodied rhythm and harmony emerged in the educational context of the Geneva Con- servatory. Jaques-Dalcroze was a professor of solfège (a system for singing notes) and harmony, and he discovered that his students were able to intel- lectually notate harmonies and rhythms, but were unable “to perform them with their body or voice” (Anderson 27).To address this issue, which he thought was the result of the modern human having “become the slave of a machine” (Jaques-Dalcroze 359), he developed a method to rectify the problem. It should be noted that Jaques-Dalcroze was not the first to develop movement and music arts for use among theater professionals, including actors, singers, and dancers. Among his precursors may be counted the French musician and teacher François Delsarte (1811–1871). Delsarte had been a successful tenor in the Opéra Comique in Paris, and later devised a system to teach the expression of emotions through gesture and voice (Eddy 10–11). Delsarte’s method, however, is closer to a system of actor training, such as that taught by Kon- stantin Stanislavsky (1863–1938), Gurdjieff’s contemporary (Schechner, “Jerzy Grotowski” 5). Jaques-Dalcroze’s method consisted of three elements, “rhythmic gymnastics, rhythmic solfège, and rhythmic improvisation, i.e., rapid composition” (Jaques-Dalcroze 361). The most important element was the first, termed Eurhythmics, through which students learned to step rhythms, first one at a time and later in combination with a second clapped rhythm. He also taught students to physically experience fast changes in tempi, via activities such as ball rolling, rapid stops, and other embodied actions (Anderson 28). Rhythmic solfège involved singing scales and harmonies. The third element, improvisation, was achievable after the students had thoroughly internalized the techni- cal training they received in music. Jaques-Dalcroze promoted improvisation as the outcome of a

style of music education where the rules of harmony, style, and so forth are naturalized in the student to such an extent that he or she does not need to rely too much on the process of thinking. Instead, having

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internalized such rules the student or composer should be much freer to express musical ideas without the need for nearly-constant reflection on mental lists of rules regarding musical composition. anderson 30

This radical new Dalcroze method was taught from 1905 to small children, and demonstrated successfully in Britain and on the Continent. It has since formed the basis for innumerable other kinaesthetic education systems, and from 1906 a two-year teacher-training certificate in the Dalcroze method was available (Campbell 15). By 1929 there were teaching institutes in Geneva, Paris, London, and New York. Jacques-Dalcroze esteemed music as “a superior agent of healthy excitation” and attributed a moral dimension to the study of music, advocating teaching it to “mould the child’s character, to give him [sic] courage and make him in love with life” (Jacques-Dalcroze 361, 365). His techniques, originally intended for music professionals, were extended to all due to his conviction that rhythmic education built bodily flexibility, increased concentration, fostered creativity, and boosted “general health, seeing that it gives power to struggle against disease or bad habits” (365). In the twenty-first century the Dalcroze method is used in schools and a multitude of therapeutic contexts, and it is especially favoured for its emphasis on improvisation, as “a way of dealing with the world where constant change and exploration are the true nature of being alive” (Abrahamson 68). Among the pupils of G. I. Gurdjieff were three women who were trained Dalcroze instructors. First, and most important, was Jeanne Matignon de Salz- mann (nee Allemand, 1889–1990), who with her husband Alexandre became a student of Gurdjieff in 1919 when he was based in Tiflis. Interestingly, she had trained at the Geneva Conservatory as a pianist before becoming a student of Jacques-Dalcroze in 1912, and was introduced to her future husband at his institute at Hellerau that year. The other two instructors were Jessmin Howarth (1892–1984), an English woman who later became one of the foremost Movements teachers in the United States, and her close friend American Rose Mary Lillard (1897–1979) who married Gurdjieff’s English pupil Charles Stanley Nott (1887–1978) in 1927 (Howarth and Howarth 114). iii Rudolf Steiner and Eurythmy

Rudolf Steiner became head of the Theosophical Society in Germany. In 1912, influenced by Marie von Sivers, an actress and artist of Russian extraction,

Religion and the Arts 21 (2017) 96–122 Downloaded from Brill.com09/27/2021 05:02:49PM via free access the contemporary context of gurdjieff’s movements 107 he broke away from Theosophy and founded the Anthroposophical Society, taking the majority of German Theosophists with him. Steiner is renowned for his contributions to fields including education, biodynamic agriculture, architecture, sculpture, poetry, and drama (Hammer 209). With von Sivers, whom he married in 1914, he developed the movement art of Eurythmy from 1912. The early stage of this art was facilitated by Lory Smits (1893–1971), whose Anthroposophist mother asked Steiner to assist her is finding a career for her daughter in 1911 after Lory’s father’s death. He suggested she work on Eurythmy, and in July 1912 she moved to Munich, where he gave her lessons in the art. Less than a year later, in August 2013, Smits premiered Eurythmy at the Summer Festival of the Theosophical Society in Munich. She established herself as a teacher of Eurythmy (Siegloch 56–74), and in 1917 married Alfred Maier. After World War i she continued to make a significant contribution to the staging of Eurythmy performances. Steiner taught using Theosophical concepts, such as: the physical, etheric, and astral bodies; the existence of higher beings; karma and reincarnation; and the basic unity of religion and science. He placed great emphasis on the culti- vation of Imagination, Inspiration, and Intuition, which are creative capacities in ordinary human life. He presented his teachings as occult science, a total esoteric system that: restored the ancient spiritual birthright of humanity; and had the capacity to enable individuals to escape their fragmented profane iden- tity and to achieve a true self (Cusack, “And the Building Becomes Man” 177). Steiner taught that the physical world and all in it is evolving into higher forms, and in humans the development of the spiritual senses facilitates the “digestion” of experiences by the soul. Through this digestion cosmological realiza- tions are enabled; for example, recognition of the interrelatedness of the whole of creation will lead to the person “becom[ing] a living Zodiac” or absorb- ing the wisdom of the dead (Steiner, Occult Reading 37). In Anthroposophy, becoming “Man” fully involved understanding the human as a microcosm of the macrocosmic cosmos. The logical consequence of this is the human being is the model for everything; the centrality of Christ in Anthroposophy follows from this principle. Steiner’s development of Eurythmy and his notion of the spiritual function of art reflected a broader concern in Europe prior to the outbreak of World War i. The Theosophically-inclined Russian Wassily Kandinsky (1866–1944), a member of the art movement Der Blaue Reiter (“the blue rider”), published his influential On the Spiritual in Art (1912), promoting a return to the spiritual as the fundamental inspiration for art and the main aim of artistic production (Fant, Klingborg, and Wilkes 9–10). Steiner believed that “ancient” peoples in Greece, Rome, and India were in harmony with their bodies and free from the

Religion and the Arts 21 (2017) 96–122 Downloaded from Brill.com09/27/2021 05:02:49PM via free access 108 cusack mind-body dualism that besets contemporary people. Unity of the mind and body, Steiner asserted, was essential, as was the “unity of spiritual life and art” (Steiner, The Arts 15). In art, as in spiritual exercises and authentic life experiences, humans could truly be themselves. Eurythmy shared certain qualities with the Mystery Plays that Steiner and von Sivers had devised and staged from 1910–1913, in that he asserted that both art forms were externalizations of “innermost laws” that could be perceived through bodily actions. This is con- gruent with the ancient Indian text Nāṭya Śāstra (c. 200bce–200ce), which states that dance was created as an adjunct to drama (Gaston and Gaston 194). The first Eurythmy classes were taught in 1912, and Steiner’s Eurythmists toured Europe afterWorldWar i in 1919 giving public demonstrations. In the same year, two training courses were established. Steiner called Eurythmy “visible speech” or “visible music,” and insisted that it was entirely different from modern dance despite the fact that both concerned the “human body in motion” (Steiner, “A Lecture on Eurythmy”). He emphasized the esoteric aspects of the movement art:

[w]e are setting the human organism in motion; we are making its limbs move. The limbs, more than any other part of the human body, are what pass over into the life of the next incarnation. They point to the future, to what comes after death. But how do we shape the limb movements we bring forth in Eurythmy. In the sense realm and in the supersensory realm we study how the larynx and all the speech organs have been brought over from the previous life and shaped by the intellectual potentials of the head and the feeling potentials of the chest. We directly link what precedes birth with what follows death. In a certain sense, we take from earthly life only the physical medium, the actual human being who is the tool or instrument of Eurythmy. But we allow this human being to make manifest what we study inwardly … Eurythmy shapes and moves the human organism in a way that furnishes direct external proof of our participation in the supersensory world. In having people do eurythmy, we link them directly to the supersensory world. 17

Eurythmy is thus explicitly cosmological and anthropological, linking the human person’s body as it manifests in this lifetime with their past and future lives, and with the universe, of which the person is a microcosm. In Anthroposophical circles Eurythmy is often referred to as the speech of the soul.2 Steiner taught that human beings spoke in primeval times with

2 Some of this material appears in Carole M. Cusack, “‘And the Building Becomes Man’:

Religion and the Arts 21 (2017) 96–122 Downloaded from Brill.com09/27/2021 05:02:49PM via free access the contemporary context of gurdjieff’s movements 109 the whole body, and not just the larynx. Modern humans use language that is abstract and removed from life. Steiner’s belief that humans possessed a physical, etheric, and astral body also assists in interpreting Eurythmy. For example, he taught that:

the etheric body never uses the mouth as the vehicle of speech, but invariably makes use of the limb-system. And it is those movements made by the etheric body during speech which are transferred into the physical body. Of course you can, if you choose, speak quite without gesture, even going so far as to stand rigidly still with your hands in your pockets; but in that case your etheric body will gesticulate all the more vigorously, sheerly out of protest. steiner, “A Lecture on Eurythmy”

This esoteric teaching reinforces Steiner’s insistence that Eurythmy is not dance; rather it is embodied speech, accompanied by declamation as well as music, and effective whether it is practiced by the individual or in a group. Eurythmy is more widely-practiced and better known than other esoteric dance arts, as the Steiner-Waldorf system of education has spread around the world and children educated within it are taught Eurythmy from an early age. Steiner claimed that Eurythmy had significance for three domains: art, education, and science. It is understood to have healing powers, as “diseased” human nature manifests in movements that are unhealthy, and Eurythmy involved movements “of a healthy nature … Movements made in this way have an effect on the organs affected by disease” (Steiner and Wegman 85). The empirical research among Anthroposophists in Britain of Geoffrey Ahern confirms that Eurythmy remains of paramount importance in the contemporary era, as a spiritual art form (Ahern 59–60). iv Rudolf von Laban and Movement Choir

Rudolf von Laban, the son of a military officer, was born in Bratislava in 1879. As a young choreographer he observed folk dances from Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Russia, and Turkey. He was impressed by the dervish dances of the Turkish

Meaning and Aesthetics in Rudolf Steiner’s Goetheanum,” in Carole M. Cusack and Alex Norman (eds), New Religions and Cultural Production (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2012). It has been substantially rewritten for this article.

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Mevlevi Order, and was astounded that dance could produce altered states of consciousness in which they could cut themselves without feeling pain. He also noted that they healed very quickly. This caused him to reflect upon

movement and the control of the circulation of the blood, about circle and round dances and their place in a universal view of existence. He retained a belief that dance could be an expanding activity for everyone, linking the individual space to infinite space. hodgson 53

He opened his first school in 1910 and shared two outstanding students, Mary Wigman and Suzanne Perrottet, with Jaques-Dalcroze. In 1926 he established the Choreographic Institute Laban and published Gymnastics and Dance. He aimed to establish a completely new system of dance aesthetics and practice (Maletic 18). He thought that gymnastics had physical, spiritual, and moral benefits and proposed “that real dancers … communicate a sense of purpose and destiny for the human race. He hope[d] to kindle an awareness of the interrelationship between the limbs and the harmoniously balanced whole person” (Hodgson 119). Like Steiner, Laban argued for the inclusion of physical discipline in the education of young children, and like Jaques-Dalcroze he said that movement arts encouraged “vitality” and lofty principles (Dörr, Rudolf Laban 60). Laban’s vision for dance, art, and life in general was expressed in Theosophi- cal terms, including elements of Kabbalah, Gnosticism, Freemasonry, and Her- metic philosophy. His thought was basically “nostalgic … interpret[ing] astro- logical and astronomical configurations, numbers, names, and other align- ments to have metaphysical significance” (Counsell, “Kinesis of Infinity” 110). When at Ascona from 1913 to 1918, his involvement in Freemasonry was at a high point, and Theodore Reuss (1955–1923) established a lodge of the Ordo Templi Orientis at Monte Verità in 1916. Reuss was later expelled from the community after making sexual advances to several women. Laban took responsibility for the lodge in 1917. In the inter-war years, Laban, a “liberal and a positivist, longed for the reformation of political relations through a cultural renewal of society” (Dörr, “Rudolf von Laban” 11). In the 1920s he staged dramatic dance vignettes that he termed “choreographic theater.”These works included: “DieGeblendeten (The Blinded), Narrenspiegel (The Fool’s Mirror), and Agamemnons Tod (The Death of Agamemnon)” and included themes from Asian religion and Antiq- uity (15). In 1928, Laban coined the term kinetographie to describe the choreographic notation he had developed. He also used the neologism choreutics for the sys-

Religion and the Arts 21 (2017) 96–122 Downloaded from Brill.com09/27/2021 05:02:49PM via free access the contemporary context of gurdjieff’s movements 111 tem of movement he had devised. He saw the roots of choreography in various ancient traditions, including Pythagorean cosmogony, Sufism, Confucianism, runes, and the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900). Steiner also was influenced by Nietzsche and visited him in his last years from 1897 to 1900, later contributing to the establishment of the Nietzsche archive in Naumberg. Laban echoed Steiner’s distrust of mimetic art, and had a similarly cosmological view of physical activity. For Laban, “the orbits of planets around the stars, the turning of the seasons, the whirling of atoms and the molecular oscilla- tions of fluids are all … facets of a great Cosmic Dance, a ceaseless kinetic cycle of action and reaction, a rise and fall that is the life of the universe” (Counsell, “Kinesis of Infinity” 109). He also echoed the now well-established distrust of the mechanical nature of modernity, as the “living, driving force of man [sic] has been neglected and left without articulate expression” (109). In response to this problem, Laban developed a programme called Laban Movement Analysis (lma), and a specific type of community dance, Bewegungschören or “Move- ment Choir,” which he facilitated in the 1920s and 1930s (Dörr, Rudolf Laban 67–69). Colin Counsell notes that Movement Choirs are generally treated as a minor part of Laban’s life, or “as part of the wider phenomenon of German Kör- perkultur, placed alongside the practice of Bodean or Swedish gymnastics, and contemporary fads for health food, body building, racial ‘hygene’ [sic], nudism and ‘wilderness’ experiences” (Counsell, “Dancing to Utopia” 154). Movement Choir performances were group experiences, and participants were usually amateurs. Yet, coordination between fifty to fifteen hundred dancers was the key to the realization of Laban’s complex patterns. The performances were “abstract … without characters, stories, or allegorical subtexts, each dance consist[ing] solely of the forms that grouped bodies traced in space” (Counsell, “Dancing to Utopia” 155). Counsell analyzes Movement Choir as Gemeinschaft, a form of personal and communal engagement that is explicitly opposed to the Gesellschaft of modern industrial society. He claims that “the Bewegungschöre provides not simply an ‘image’ of Gemeinschaft, but an example of it, a successful working model of social interaction which refutes the logic of modern instrumentality, proffering instead the relations of an actual, albeit short-lived, community” (163). These group performances became enormously popular in the Weimar Republic, and approximately fifty community schools were established to facilitate Movement Choirs. Laban was sympathetic to Ger- man nationalism, and after Hitler came to power in 1933 (when he was the choreographic director of the Berlin State Opera) he became “the dance orga- nizer of the Nazi regime” (Dörr, “Rudolf von Laban” 22).The mass event element of Movement Choir (renamed by the Nazis “community dance”) and Laban’s interest in Festkultur segued into the massed Nuremberg rallies and Nazi spec-

Religion and the Arts 21 (2017) 96–122 Downloaded from Brill.com09/27/2021 05:02:49PM via free access 112 cusack tacles (Kew 79–81). After the defeat of Germany in World War ii he moved to England, where he died in 1958 at Weybridge, Surrey. v Peter Deunov and Paneurhythmy

The Bulgarian mystic Peter Deunov, known by his spiritual name Beinsa Douno, was an uchitelyat or spiritual teacher, and founded the Fellowship of Light in 1900. This group, which is allegedly based on the beliefs and practices of the medieval Bogomils, is also called the “White Brothers and Sisters (or Douno- visti) movement” (Irwin 208). Deunov, the son of an Orthodox priest, was influenced Methodism as a youth and “studied medicine and theology in Boston and NewYork” from 1888 to 1895 (Lorimer, Circle of Sacred Dance 2). Upon his return to Bulgaria he pursued spiritual knowledge, meditated in the mountains, and had a significant religious revelation in 1897. The Fellowship was initially very small, but grew steadily, and in 1905 Deunov established a school in Sofia (3). He was banished from Sofia in 1917 due to pressure from the Orthodox Church, and moved to Varna, though he later returned to the capital. He taught that humans consisted of a body, a soul, and a spirit, and that “happiness and health are natural conditions” (Popova 257). In order to achieve this state Deunov pre- scribed vegetarianism, alternative medicine, moderation, practicing love and thankfulness, and “song, prayer, and meditation exercises directed towards the sun, which was regarded as a living symbol of the divine world” (Irwin 209). Deunov’s teachings integrated Eastern and Western ideas and may be termed a Theosophically-inflected version of esoteric Christianity. From 1914 Deunov’s followers systematically recorded his lectures, and in 1922 he opened an esoteric school in which Paneurhythmy was taught. Pan- eurhythmy is “a form of … dance mixed with meditation, visualisation and poetry recitation that was supposed to tune the performer to the rhythm of nature” (Anczyk, 16). From the mid-1920s, summer camps were established in the spectacular natural setting of the Seven Lakes area of the Rila Mountains of south-western Bulgaria, the highest point in the Balkan region. Paneurhythmy is performed in this setting to this day (Lorimer, Prophet for Our Times 27). By 1926 Deunov had established a center called Izgrev (“Sunshine”) in outer Sofia, and had instituted an annual congress. He had regular mystical encounters with Christ since 1914 when he instituted meditation retreats in Arbanassi vil- lage. Deunov viewed Christ as “the first manifestation and limitation of God as love” (Lorimer Prophet for Our Times 42). The summer camps in the Rila Mountains continued till 1939 when World War ii broke out. By that time Deunov’s teaching had spread beyond Bulgaria. In 1937 he sent his student

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Mikhaël Aïvanhov (1900–1986) to France to establish teaching centers. Aïvan- hov founded two L’Ecole Divine centers (in Sevres, near Paris, and Bonfin on the Riviera) and taught “non-violence, cooperation, and a pluralistic vision of an ideal brotherhood … centred on ‘solar religion’ with Christ as a supreme symbol of the ideal human being and a model of spiritual accomplishment” (Irwin 210). Deunov believed mountains were energy accumulators, and Paneurythmy is “the great universal harmony of movement in the whole cosmos” (Lorimer Circle of Sacred Dance 26), a spiritual act that involves seven cosmic principles. These principles are: Intelligence; Correspondence; Vibration or Movement; Polarity or Duality; Rhythm; Cause and Effect; and Unity or Relatedness (28– 31). Paneurythmy is danced by male and female couples in a circle that moves anticlockwise, with the left shoulder generally facing the inside. Lorimer notes that “partners should be an arm’s length from each other and 1.5 metres behind the preceding couple” (38). There are twenty-eight positions or actions in Paneurythmy, each exemplifying a certain spiritual value or activity, such as awakening, giving, elevation, flying, beauty, flexibility, jumping, and breathing (38–81). As with most of the systems of esoteric dance examined in this article, there is little scholarly work on Paneurhythmy, and almost none in English. Boyanka Peneva compared Paneurhythmy with Steiner’s Eurythmy, and in a somewhat uncritical way concluded that “the circle of Paneurythmy is based on a profound philosophy—it reveals key points in the development in the human soul through movements and music. This process promotes the processes of self-perfecting, expanding of the consciousness, and attaining of virtues” (285). There are a number of interesting parallels to Gurdjieff’s Movements in Deunov’s system. Both referred to their teachings as esoteric Christianity and established esoteric dance arts with cosmological implications. Deunov’s understanding of the humans as consisting of body, mind, and spirit recalls Gurdjieff’s description of humans as possessing three “centres” and Jessmin Howarth’s observation that some people, through Movements, “become aware that our three main centres, head, body, feeling rarely work together or in harmony” (Howarth and Howarth 106). Deunov claimed that Paneurythmy was “transformative and ennobling … [and] contributed not only to [individual] evolution, but also … to the evolution of the human race” (Lorimer, Circle of Sacred Dance 34). David Lorimer’s The Circle of Sacred Dance (1991) is a detailed introduction to Paneurhythmy that describes the twenty-eight specific actions that are performed by the couples, with illustrations and explanations of what each gesture and movement means.There are two particular parallels with Gur- djieff’s teachings that merit attention; the “sunbeams” sequence of dances that use the center as well as the edge of the circle, and the use of the pentagram,

Religion and the Arts 21 (2017) 96–122 Downloaded from Brill.com09/27/2021 05:02:49PM via free access 114 cusack both of which call to mind Gurdjieff’s use of the enneagram and the Move- ments that trace its numbered points (Petsche, “Sacred Dance” 53–75). For Deunov the pentagram is “the symbol of the Cosmic Man … The head symbolises Truth, the right leg Equity, the right arm Wisdom, the left leg Virtue, and the left arm Love” (Lorimer, Circle of Sacred Dance 95). The specific motion performed on the pentagram has twelve pairs of dancers standing in rows of five like the spokes of a wheel. During the first sixteen bars of music, the pairs “walking perpendicularly to the radius of the circle” (103). The pair symbolizing the Head, the two pairs symbolizing the Feet, and the two pairs symbolizing the Hands step slightly differently to the others. At the close of the sixteen bars, the pairs rearrange themselves slightly to form the Pentagram. Then the music recommences, and a complex sequence of movements occurs

five times, after which each pair has been head, left and right foot, and left and right hand. This means that every human soul undergoes the experience of the five basic principles with which the Cosmic Man is linked: Love, Wisdom, Truth, Equity, and Virtue. In this way the human soul acquires the experiences necessary to complete development. When all the rows have performed the five cycles here described, the partners of each pair shake hands cordially, because by means of the Pentagram they are already linked in the Heart of the Great Cosmic Man. 104

While it is clear that this experience is not identical in form or meaning to the Enneagram Movements, there is a common underlying structure: a symbol (the enneagram, the pentagram) is accorded significance and the dancers tracing its lineaments benefit spiritually from the exercise, which is both physical (outer work) and spiritual (inner work).3 vi Nijinsky, Roerich and The Rite of Spring (1913)

Serge (Sergei Pavlovich) Diaghilev (1872–1929) founded the Ballets Russes in 1909. In the early years of the company it was based in St. Petersburg and the principal choreographer was Michel (Mikhail Mikhaylovich) Fokine. In 1912

3 My colleague Suzanne Owen (Leeds Trinity University) shared her experience of practicing Paneurhythmy in Glasgow at the Theosophical Lodge some years ago. The dance was taught by a man who was a former Anthroposophist and a follower of Deunov after that. Teachers from Bulgaria visited the group.

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Diaghilev forced Fokine’s resignation and hired the Ballets Russes’s celebrated dancer Vaslav Nijinsky (1890–1950) in his place (Garofala 50). Nijinsky is an enigmatic figure; he was Diaghilev’s lover but married Countess Romola de Pulszcy-Lubocy-Cselfalva in 1913, and retired from the stage in 1919 after a break- down that preceded a diagnosis of schizophrenia. There is a frustrating lack of evidence regarding his sources for The Rite of Spring, a sensational work that followed earlier successes including L’Apres-midi d’un faune (Afternoon of a Faun), which was based on a poem by French symbolist Stéphane Mallarmé with music by Claude Debussy,and was first performed with Nijinsky in the title role in 1912. Lynn Garofala indicates that he was inspired by: Ancient Greek art; modern painters and sculptors including Henri Matisse, Paul Gauguin, Auguste Rodin, Paul Cézanne, and Amedeo Modigliani; and athletic movements, such as those of tennis players. He also saw Jaques-Dalcroze’s Eurhythmics students in St. Petersburg in 1911, and visited Hellerau with Diaghilev (Garafola 60). The music for The Rite of Spring was composed by Igor Stravinsky (1882– 1971). He wanted to create a “pagan ritual” in collaboration with Nikolai Roerich, who was a folklorist and archaeologist, as well as an artist, and friend of Nijin- sky. The pulsating rhythms underlying a score made up of fragments of archaic folk music was as shocking as the subject matter and Nijinsky’s choreography (it is subtitled “Pictures of Pagan Russia in Two Parts”). While not precisely atonal, as parts are in b Flat Minor, it is often very difficult to tell what key The Rite of Spring is in, and the discordant sounds created anxiety and even hor- ror among its hearers. The impact of the ballet was sensational. Diaghilev had publicized the ballet widely, with events and galas guaranteeing a full house on the opening night. Celebrities, including fashion designer Coco Chanel, the American writer Gertrude Stein, and French novelist Marcel Proust, were all in attendance. Sarah Kennel makes an important point regarding the allegedly ancient, pagan subject of the sacrifice of a young girl at the start of spring:

[a]lthough the choreography’s ostensible aim was to represent the un- trammeled vitality of pagan ritual, Nijinsky’s formal means of expression repeatedly invoked comparisons to the fractured subjects of modernity: alienated, hysterical, epileptic, mechanical, and electrified were among the terms critics invoked in their attempts to grasp this unfamiliar language of the body … the frenetic rhythms and the uncertain oscillation between extremes of vitality and automation which characterised Sacre’s choreography resembled, on a number of levels, forms of somatic behav- ior increasingly associated with the psychological and corporeal conditions of modernity. In a physiological language which revealed the mech-

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anised nature of bodily impulse, Sacre proposed an uncanny alliance between the prehistoric and the modern. 6

Critics were shocked at the presentation of the body as far from beautiful and the eschewing of the traditional postures of ballet, which nevertheless conveyed the intentions of Stravinsky, Nijinsky, Roerich, and Diaghilev very clearly. Critics and audiences were horrified by the ritualism of the pagans, “bleak, dehumanised … [and] totalitarian,” and compared them to ‘primitive’ peoples like African tribes and Maori (Kennel 12–13). Nijinsky’s marriage while on tour in South America in 1913 resulted in Diaghi- lev sacking him. Diaghilev’s new lover and choreographer Léonide Massine (1896–1979) refused to stage any of Nijinsky’s works; thus, the choreography for The Rite of Spring (which had only been performed eight times) was lost, and later versions staged after his retirement in 1919 featured new choreography which was devised by Massine in the 1920s. However, Nijinsky’s choreography was reconstructed by the American Joffrey Ballet in 1987, after painstaking work by Millicent Hodson, a dance historian, and her husband Kenneth Archer, an art historian and specialist on Roerich (Hodson 35). Adolphe Boschot, a critic, said the dancers gesticulated “like dervishes as they repeat[ed] the same gesture a hundred times over: they paw the ground, they stamp, they stamp, they stamp …” (Hodson 35). Various fascinating synergies emerge: Jaques- Dalcroze apparently asked Stravinsky to teach Marie Rambert (a Dalcroze student who worked for the Ballets Russes) the score for The Rite of Spring, but received no response. Stravinsky thought that Eurhythmics was incompatible with his music, but Diaghilev used the method to teach dancers rhythms, and Nijinsky developed the habit of counting beats from Eurhythmics (Craft 175). One especially interesting parallel with Movements is the “stiff, mechanical, puppet-like dancing” which the audience found alienating.4 Critics noted that this was the opposite of the freedom and spontaneity that were associated with primal cultures, and that Nijinsky’s “conscientious stylisation of gesture and mechanisation of movement … verged on what one critic called ‘automaticity’” (Kennel 17). Hodson’s research suggests that Nijinsky, Roerich and Stravinsky agreed that seeing and hearing The Rite of Spring should be like participating in the ritual that the ballet depicted, and that “the postures, motions, and

4 A journalist apparently once said to Gurdjieff: “Mr Gurdjieff, this has nothing to do with dancing, they appear to be puppets.” Gurdjieff is said to have responded “Certainly, you’re right about that. From the outside they appear to be puppets, but inside they are free!” (van Dullemen 150).

Religion and the Arts 21 (2017) 96–122 Downloaded from Brill.com09/27/2021 05:02:49PM via free access the contemporary context of gurdjieff’s movements 117 patterns, like the totem signs, are meant to focus energy through design, to channel the forces evoked by the rite and disperse them for the good of the community” (Hodson 39). This suggests that like Movement Choir, The Rite of Spring was “not simply an ‘image’ of Gemeinschaft, but an example of it, a successful working model of social interaction which refutes the logic of modern instrumentality, proffering instead the relations of an actual, albeit short-lived, community” (Counsell, “Dancing to Utopia” 163). However, this “pagan” community was one that even the avant-garde in 1913 were unable to appreciate. vii Conclusion

Despite the difficulty in definitively establishing facts in Gurdjieff’s life or teaching, this article has identified interesting and perhaps important influences and connections with regard to the development of the Movements. Gur- djieff was interested in dance and worked onTheStruggleof theMagicians from 1914, suggesting that he was familiar with the Ballets Russes, formed in 1909, the same year he was head of a Masonic temple of which Nikolai Roerich was a member (Azize, “Biographical Studies” 26). The notorious ballet sensation The Rite of Spring debuted in Paris in 1913, with Roerich (with whom Gurdjieff can hardly fail to have been acquainted) as the set and costume designer. Gurd- jieff also knew Diaghilev, who according to James Moore “pressed Gurdjieff, unavailingly, to include the Sacred Dances as a novelty item in one of his Bal- lets Russes seasons” (Moore 352). Gurdjieff similarly met with Jacques-Dalcroze and visited Hellerau in 1921, allegedly with a view to purchasing his institute, something that did not occur, though Gurdjieff met Jessmin Howarth and Rose Mary Lillard, who became his pupils (Petsche, Gurdjieff and Music 225–226). The extent of Gurdjieff’s connections with the artistic, musical, and theatri- cal worlds is rarely appreciated. His pupil and partner in composition, Thomas de Hartmann and his wife Olga found work in Tiflis in 1919 when Gurdjieff and his followers moved on from Essentuki. The Director of the Imperial Conserva- tory there, Nikolai Nikolayevich Tcherepnin, appointed de Hartmann Professor of Composition, and he also assisted him to become “artistic director of the Tiflis State Opera,” in which Olga sang the lead role in a production of Georges Bizet’s Carmen (Petsche, Gurdjieff and Music 74). Another of de Hartmann’s friends was Alexandre de Salzmann, who was in Tiflis, his birthplace, with his wife Jeanne. He was a distinguished artist and stage designer who trained in Munich. He and his wife returned to Tiflis after the Russian Revolution. They followed Gurdjieff to Constantinople and Paris, where Alexandre designed,

Religion and the Arts 21 (2017) 96–122 Downloaded from Brill.com09/27/2021 05:02:49PM via free access 118 cusack with Gurdjieff, a new script that read vertically from top to bottom, to write the forty aphorisms that were featured on the walls of the Prieuré (Moore 341–342). Artists and literary figures were plentiful in the milieu of the Prieuré des Basses Loges, including Alfred R. Orage, the radical editor of The New Age, Jane Heap and Margaret Anderson, editors of The Little Review, and the New Zealand mod- ernist writer Katherine Mansfield (Cusack, “Gurdjieff and Katherine Mansfield” 2, 8–13). Gurdjieff’s considerable knowledge of Theosophy and related esoteric systems suggests that it is likely that Rudolf Steiner’s movement art Eurythmy was known to him. Further, it is probable that Gurdjieff and Jaques-Dalcroze were in company with Rudolf von Laban at Hellerau on at least one occasion.5 Jaques-Dalcroze also witnessed the Movements performance at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in Paris in December 1923. His reaction was hostile, and he alleged that Gurdjieff had plagiarized system (Azize, “Sacred Dances” 308). It is more difficult to demonstrate clear lines of connection between Gurdji- eff and Peter Deunov, but this article argues that direct connections are not needed, and nor would they necessarily indicate causal relationships. Rather, the esoteric scene of the early twentieth century was dominated by movement art forms that existed in parallel with the secular world’s emerging love affair with the body, physical fitness, and individual and collective human optimiza- tion. The apparent primitivism of the dance techniques, and the valorization of pre-modern organic communities that the various teachers promoted, was starkly contrasted with the use of repetitive and mechanical motions, indica- tive of the modern, industrial society in which all these systems were devised. Gurdjieff was but one guru in a complex milieu, and his undoubtedly original teaching owed as much to the tenor of the times as to specific pioneers in the field of esotericism.

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