Steiner's pairing of two eurythmic forms by scale: the planetary heavens above (macrocosm) and the speaking larynx within (microcosm).
The Macrocosmic and Microcosmic Dance in Anthroposophy is Rudolf Steiner's pairing of two eurythmic presentation-types according to cosmic scale. In the macrocosmic dance, the planetary dance and the zodiac of the Twelve Moods, the performers image the heavens and stand closest of all to the macrocosm. In the microcosmic dance, the eurythmic gestures reproduce the positions that head and larynx assume in forming the speech-sounds, so the dancer stands closest to the microcosm. Steiner gave both indications at Dornach in late August 1915, recorded in Eurythmy: The Revelation of the Speaking Soul (GA 277). The arrangement places the human being between two mirrors, the cosmos read in the planets and zodiac above, and the speaking organism read in the vowels, consonants, and sounding word within, one and the same human anthropology danced outwardly at two opposite magnitudes of being.
In Steiner's Own Words
In the eurythmic gestures for vowels and consonants we are to see reproductions, imitations of the human head and larynx, of the positions which the organs assume in forming the speech-sounds. In the following arrangement we have something that in truth comes closest to the image of the microcosm. In this presentation we have what stands close to the organism; it represents speech. Here one is closest of all to the microcosm, just as in the planetary dance and in the zodiac one stands closest of all to the macrocosm. Thus is the whole human being, head and larynx, organised.
What it Means Today
These two dances are not a museum diagram. They are still performed and taught. The Section for the Performing Arts at the Goetheanum in Dornach, the same building near which Steiner gave the August 1915 indications, leads the worldwide eurythmy stream under Stefan Hasler, and its Goetheanum Eurythmy Ensemble continues to stage the zodiacal Twelve Moods as Steiner choreographed it: twelve performers in an outer circle, one strophe to each sign, the company imaging the heavens. That is the macrocosmic dance, still danced. The microcosmic dance survives in every speech-eurythmy class, where a student learns the sound A as an opening of the arms and the sound B as a sheltering gesture, building the larynx's hidden movement back into visible space.
The pairing also clarifies what eurythmy is for. It is not interpretive dance set to a poem. It is an attempt to read the human being twice over, once as a small cosmos and once as a participant in the large one. Thalira synthesis: the macrocosmic and microcosmic dance is Steiner staging the old Hermetic axiom "as above, so below" as choreography, with the planets and the zodiac on the outer arc and the vowels and consonants of the speaking soul on the inner, so that the performer's own body becomes the hinge between heaven and the word. A practitioner who holds both poles at once moves differently from one who treats eurythmy as graceful illustration.
Where to Read More