Arbor Vitae Project In Ottawa

Sylvie Richard has recently completed her eurythmy training in Spring Valley, and she is not letting grass grow under her feet in Ottawa. She is already giving public performances of tone eurythmy and leading adult workshops - in English and in French! Of particular interest is the Arbor Vitae project...

I have prepared an artistic project called ARBOR VITAE project which I am promoting for the Waldorf schools and eventually for any group of children as well as to adult groups interested in participating in this artistic production. As the tittle alludes to, I use the very rich stories and images, poetry and music that exist around this reality of the Tree of Life. This is meant to be a co-creation with my participants so already the children in grade 6-7 at the Ottawa Waldorf School have created their own short poems about trees directed by their teacher in their exploration of the four elements (earth, water, air, fire) which we will be weaving into the fabric of the production. The format of work is in block of 4 weeks (ideally 3x/week), and we will have 4 phases in the project. Phase 1 is to work on skills which will allow the participants to be sufficiently comfortable with eurythmy gestures and forms. Time will be used as needed toward this goal- depending on the group. Since it is a co-creation I am very interested in the creative unfolding that will emerge through the different phases of the project. Some of my own artistic work solo will be weaved as well in the final production, so that one will be able to experience a multi-level of artistic capacities.I believe very deeply in the artistic capacities that live in the human being, and that is so very alive and mobile in children. We have started this week at the OWS with the grade4-5 and 6-7 classes and it is already full of promises!

Performance Makes Strong Impressions

"...And there are those like you and me and many many others
Who can never forget the Man with the Broken Fingers.
His will, his pride as a free man, shall go on.
His shadow moves and his sacred fingers speak...."

The Remembrance Day program by Grasshopper Productions at the Toronto Waldorf School left very strong impressions on the audience. The Carl Sandburg piece, "The Man With The Broken Fingers" was especially powerful. In this post, I am restating (largely in my own words) some of the comments I have heard from high school eurythmy students. I have also invited other audience members to submit their own articles...MM

"Not bad.." This was meant as a compliment - the performance was actually very interesting to him. "Edgy...surprising...shocking..." It seems that the students were gripped, and they really felt engaged with what was happening on the stage. The eurythmy was not just happening "out there", but "in here". They used words like "weight...grounded...immediate...," and seemed surprised when they remembered they were talking about eurythmy.

There has been some discussion about the relationship between eurythmy and drama. It was very effective when the speaker very ceremoniously put on the boots, and began the Gestapo investigation. But when the costumes are so realistic, is it still eurythmy? Does the speech take over? Do we lose the power of eurythmy, and enter a realm of purely physical drama? Does it matter?

The students appreciated the artistic sequence. The Levertov pieces, which opened and closed the program, involved a rhythmical interplay of different elements, and provided a balance to the more visceral parts of the program. One student felt that the eurythmists somehow managed to maintain a spiritual quality while entering a very physical realm.

I have heard very little about the tone pieces...perhaps this is slowly working on a deeper level...

I asked, "if we showed the piece on YouTube, would people have a similar experience?."

They replied (in so many words), "No."

Youth Movement - Part Two

This summer, at the Whitehorse Conference, I enjoyed a performance evening by Marjorie Taliano-Nordas. Marjorie spoke with affection and gratitude about her first eurythmy lessons with Christa Kuehn in Montreal. She is now the Director of the Eurythmy School in Oslo, and feels an enduring relationship to Canada.

Lori Scotchko, also from Canada, is currently studying at the Oslo school, and has promised an article about her experiences at this excellent school. I have also heard recently from Marie-Eve Piche, who is studying in Spring Valley. (Marc-Antoine Brodeur is studying in the UK, and you can see his earlier post here.)

It's wonderful that they are using the Internet (email and blog postings) to reach out. Although each of us often feels isolated, it's inspiring to re-discover tha we are part of an international community. We have so much to learn from each other, and this is a great way to start.

Grasshopper Productions - Ontario Tour

Program at Toronto Waldorf School -Wednesday, November 11, 2009
For details, call the School at 905-881-1611

11am - High School Performance of No More Lies . Reflections on War. This program features eurythmy to poetry (including Two Threnodies and a Psalm by Denise Levertov, Dolce Et Decorum Est by Wilfred Owen, and The Man With The Broken Fingers by Carl Sandburg) and music (including Intermezzo in A Minor by Johannes Brahms, and Prelude/Wartime by Gregor Simon-McDonald).

2pm - Lower School Performance of The Wild Geese, a story from Lapland.

Tickets will be sold at the door: adults $10, students $5. All are welcome.

Program at Novalis Hall, Camphill Nottawasaga on Friday November 13
For details, contact Treasa O'Driscoll

Practical Things Like Stories and Eurythmy

Grasshopper Productions will soon be presenting a Fairy Tale in eurythmy at the Toronto Waldorf School, and Jonathan Snow wrote this piece for parents in the school newsletter as a general introduction. - MM

Fairytales have been used from the dawn of mankind to convey wisdom to new generations of listeners. Raised to the status of "Volksgut" - cultural heritage of a people - by the scientific endeavours of men like the Grimm brothers during the Romantic era, they became used to convey moral lessons to children. A century later, modern psychology revisited tales and myths, using them as maps of the forces at work in the human psyche, most of which remain largely hidden from our waking consciousness. C.G. Jung argued that each of the different characters in these stories represented archetypal forces active within the soul of a single person. Rudolf Steiner indicated that the characters in fairytales may be direct representations of invisible but very concrete forces, which we can call spiritual beings, which are represented using imagery from the world perceptible to our everyday consciousness. In any case, we have slowly rediscovered that fairytales are not mere childish trifles, but are vehicles of great wisdom from which we as adults can profit.

Eurythmy, which strives to make visible that which normally remains hidden, is a medium of choice for conveying the many sheaths of a fairytale to an audience. It easily frees itself from representational realism, where clothing, mannerisms, etc. of a specific culture are reproduced as accurately and authentically as possible. Rather, eurythmy gives itself the task of conveying an accurate picture of the deeper truths embedded as seeds in works of art. To do this, it uses different qualities of movement and colours (in costumes and lighting), to show visual archetypes and create various moods, and thus speaks a language that reaches us beyond our intellectual comprehension.

The spoken word as conveyer of wisdom is not limited to a role of preserving past tradition. Poetic endeavours in all times seek to capture the essence of our world - visible and invisible - as the poet in all his modernity perceives it. Again, in poetry as in fairytales, we have a language that addresses far more than the human intellect. That which a text wishes to convey may be amplified by eurythmy using the same means as for fairytales. And, whereas fairytales offer us a plot to hold on to, poetry may leave us with no such anchor. So for those of us who have difficulty finding the entrance into modern lyrical art, eurythmy can serve as a kind of subtitles for the messages between the lines.

More on Renate Krause

On October 6, Renate Krause decided that she had recovered sufficiently from an operation to resume her eurythmy work, and she opened our study group with a stimulating group eurythmy exercise. We were putting away chairs at the end of the meeting, when somehow she fell in a corner, with the result that her arm was broken. She has been in considerable pain, but she has recovered sufficiently to return home, and she is able to drive when she needs to. It's quite incredible how undaunted she seems by these difficult trials...

Feeling Our Feet

Here is an excerpt from an interesting review of a book about barefoot running in The Toronto Star. The author has done extensive research and learned that athletic shoes are doing more harm than good, and says we should be paying much more attention to natural foot movements...

"LEONARDO DA VINCI observed that the human foot is 'a work of art and a masterpiece of engineering.'

Each foot/ankle combo contains 26 bones (both sides comprise one-quarter of the bones of the human body), 33 joints and more than 100 muscles, tendons and ligaments. Thousands of nerve endings also make our feet extremely sensitive – one of the reasons torturers throughout history have whipped the soles of prisoners' feet.

It's amazing that our feet can sustain the constant shock of walking, let alone running. Especially since, according to some scientists, we've been wrecking our feet. Our shoes, whether stilettos or cushioned, spring-loaded, gel-padded, air-bubble-infused sneakers, make us walk in a way that is not natural for our feet, studies say.

Watch a baby take those first steps. There's a natural way we all walk, with short strides, landing softly on our heels or the balls of our feet before our toes spring us forward.
Now walk in your best running shoes. You'll likely take longer strides and, due to the padding in the heels, strike down harder, unable to roll to the side because of the thick sole and inflexibility of the shoe. This rigid base also stops your toes from springing you forward, so your legs have to work harder.

We're also not feeling what's really going on with our feet. High shock-absorbing footwear prohibits our sensitive plantar surface from sending pain and pressure impulses that would naturally allow us to alter our gait to reduce stress.

"There's a benefit to barefoot running, I really think there is, no doubt," says Dr. Jack Taunton, the chief medical officer for the 2010 Olympic Winter Games. Taunton, director of the Allan McGavin Sports Medicine Centre at the University of British Columbia, has conducted studies on injured runners and basketball players that show with less support, the body heals faster. The foot and ankle are forced to build muscles that support the ailing area.
It's just the old adage, he says: 'If you don't use it, you lose it.'"