Youth Movement

Marc-Antoine Brodeur is studying eurythmy in UK, and hopes to return to Canada when he's finished. Here is his report about a recent practicum...MM

Teenagers and Dissonance in Oslo

I arrived in Oslo, Norway just after a few days of deep snowfall and so the city was beautifully white and rounded. The land of alliteration met me with icy clearness. I was coming from Botton Village in green England, in my third year of eurythmy training, and about to plunge into ten days of teaching practice. My mentor Tatiana Magnussen, a Russian pianist turned eurythmist, was most inspiring to watch with the children. She had a solid strength about her and warm eyes that met them all with joy. The different moods she was able to create from kindergarten to the tenth grade demonstrated not only her understanding of the needs of the growing child but also her capacity to translate these soul and body needs through music and poetry into living expression. The children and teenagers loved it. She was also very respected by her colleagues.

Teenagers and dissonance

During my time in Asker Steiner school, Tatiana asked me to introduce the tenth grade to the worlds of major, minor and dissonance. She suggested I use 'The Death of Ase' from the Peer Gynt Suite (op.46) by Edward Grieg. This slow piece in 4/4, an Andante doloroso, proved to be very effective as it gave the necessary breadth of time to live into the new movements but also delivered all the intensity you would want for a teenage soul! The questions I asked myself included: how do I get the students to move what they are feeling at this time of their lives? How can I do this in a way that is fun and yet so intense that they forget about being cool but just dive in?

Just the Boys

I had a first class just with the young men-in-becoming. After a full eurythmy body and soul warm up, I had them in two lines, far apart, facing each other. They were to listen to the gentle major or minor rolling arpeggio and move towards each other with the appropriate gesture; they had to listen as they did not know what mood would come. Then, as a louder dissonant chord sounded, they were to plunge jumping down (with their legs) through the other line (who were doing the same in the opposite direction) while stretching and tensing with their arms forward and backward and all the while keeping very vertical and awake, eyes forward. Then, once having pierced through, they would slow into another major or minor in calmness, then breathe out, listening inside to what had just happened. Sometimes they laughed hard and other times there was a brief stillness that ensued; difficult to describe. They seemed to have had great joy in this and other variations.

Teenage Girls and Boys

The next day I did the same exercise with the whole class. The boys were quite well behaved but were so sure of their movements that they made it a bit too rough for the girls to be able to experience it with as much inwardness. Having known this might happen, I would have asked for a separate class with the girls so that they might have the chance to also have the tender experiences of minor and tearing dissonance.

Forms without Forms

When we came to 'The Death of Ase' I felt that what worked best (having been inspired by three weeks work with Dorothea Mier), was to have the students listen to the music and then move it in two groups guided by my hands with forms previously worked on with Tatiana. This we did many times, then slowly bringing in the gestures. Only later, if necessary, were the forms illustrated on the board. This guiding with the hands, until they knew the form without me, I think left them more free to experience the movement in space (getting out of their heads) and especially to be sensitive to moving together with their compatriots. It was touching to see them, through this whole process, come to a real experience of the music and to be able to express it with their bodies, right to the fingertips and toes.

A Teacher

It is with gratitude that I was able to observe Tatiana in her humble, devoted and energetic work. She was able to bring children and teenagers to real experiences of the essential nature of music and poetry. She was a solid rudder for the teens' tempestuous souls and a revealer of the joys of incarnation for the younger ones. Her inner calm and outer versatility met them in their growing needs and this they responded to with joy. So after a rewarding time in Oslo I bade them a warm farewell, put away my woolly mittens and returned to lush fields of England.