Eurythmy & the Art of Speech

Goethe's aesthetic law, taken up by Steiner, that true art does not copy nature but raises it, so the artwork stands as a higher summit upon nature's own.

Steiner's pairing of the bright vowels e and i with the excited nerve-person and the dark vowels a, o, u, au with the calm blood-person.

Steiner's name for eurythmy as a movement training that works on body, soul, and spirit together, unlike ordinary gymnastics, which obeys only bodily law.

Steiner's doctrine that the three poetic genres each demand a distinct mode of speech formation: plastic for epic, musical for lyric, a synthesis for dramatic.

Steiner's claim that eurythmy, unlike gymnastics, draws the child's own will-initiative out from within, making the whole human being strong in will.

Steiner's claim that in eurythmy's visible speech one cannot lie, so the practice schools children and adults toward an inner sense of truth.

Coloured light Steiner brought into eurythmy that harmonizes with the dancers' garments and seems to be breathed in by the moving figures, not merely cast upon them.

Steiner's threefold of speech quality, in which good or bad speaking stands as an ethics of the word beyond the beautiful and the merely correct.

The restrained, predispositional gestures of the larynx and chest that stay hidden in ordinary speech, which eurythmy releases and carries out visibly in space.

Steiner's contrast between inhabiting the bare sound-element of speech and grasping a word's abstract meaning, which he treated as a later, secondary intrusion.

Steiner's speech practice of carrying every sound on one continuous, conscious current of breath, rather than the chopped-up breathing of ordinary talk.

The two polar styles of eurythmic form Steiner taught in 1915: the ecstatic central-and-chorus Dionysian, and the calm upward Apollonian carried out in stillness.

An early eurythmy exercise practised with copper rods, arms fully outstretched at shoulder height, repeated sevenfold to strengthen the muscles of the back.

The eurythmic gesture is the visible etheric movement of speech: eurythmy reads the larynx's formative movements off the etheric body and renders them through the whole human being.

The choreographic path a eurythmist traces across the stage, the spatial line that renders a poem or piece of music as visible movement.

The first word Rudolf Steiner ever set into eurythmy, a sequence of sound-gestures meaning "I cleanse myself of all that hinders me from beholding the Highest."

Steiner's pairing of two eurythmic forms by scale: the planetary heavens above (macrocosm) and the speaking larynx within (microcosm).

Steiner's view of eurythmy as ensouled movement that develops the whole child and restores health, judged artistically, pedagogically, and hygienically.

Steiner's polarity of two formative elements in spoken sound: a sculptural element that shapes the word, and a musical element of streaming tone.

Steiner's description of eurythmy as the temple-dance art of the ancient Mysteries renewed for the present age in fully modern form.

Steiner's view that lips, teeth, tongue and palate are a living instrument to be made supple and raised into consciousness, not muscles to be positioned.

Steiner's cosmic poem of twelve seven-line strophes, choreographed in eurythmy so twelve performers form the zodiac and seven move within it as the planets.

The founding principle of eurythmy, that the hidden speech-movements of the larynx are carried out by the entire body, making the whole person a visible larynx.

Steiner's paired speech technique: vocalise and speak slowly toward breath and reflection, or consonantise and speak quickly toward blood and affect.