Eurythmy–A Healing Movement Art Unique to Waldorf Education

Sanderling’s Eurythmy teacher, Amy Schick, prepared this article on Eurythmy. Before delving into this comprehensive grade-by-grade window into Eurythmy, let’s first take a moment to learn about Amy, who brings the students of Sanderling Waldorf a plethora of rich and diverse experiences in the arts. 

An Affinity for Arts Based Education

Amy Schick, “Ms. Amy,” has had a lifelong passion for the arts. Growing up in New York City, she attended classes in dance, singing, music theory, acting, drawing, and painting. Amy graduated from the Fashion Institute of Technology in N.Y.C. with a degree in Fashion Design. Amy’s other lifelong passion is caring for and teaching young children. She was introduced to Waldorf Education through her sister-in-law, a Waldorf kindergarten teacher and early childhood educator. While attending the foundation year at Rudolf Steiner College, Amy received lessons in Eurythmy and decided to pursue this training because it allowed her to combine her passion for art with nurturing and teaching children.

Amy graduated from the Eurythmy School in Spring Valley, N.Y. and completed her pedagogical training at Emerson College in East Sussex, England. She was a member of The Los Angeles Eurythmy Ensemble and The South Coast Eurythmy Ensemble where she took part in performances for adults and children and Anthroposophical Festivals. Since 1992, Amy has taught Eurythmy to students in Nursery through 8th grade at the Waldorf School of Santa Barbara, the Journey School in Aliso Viejo, the Waldorf School of San Diego, and the Sanderling Waldorf School from 1999 - present.

A common question parents ask when they first come to investigate Waldorf Education is what is Eurythmy? Why does my child have to do this? What benefit does it provide? Here are answers to these questions. 

What is Eurythmy?

The word Eurythmy derives from the Greek roots, meaning harmonious rhythm. Eurythmy was developed by the founder of Waldorf Education, Austrian philosopher and educator, Rudolf Steiner. Steiner wanted to introduce a new impulse to dance, in particular, an alternative to modern dance, with its emphasis on personal expression. Steiner sought to reconnect dance to its origins as a sacred art form inspired by the Muses. However, rather than looking back and recreating the ancient temple dances, as Isadora Duncan and Ruth St. Denis strove to do, Steiner wanted to create an organic movement art suited to the inner and outer needs and character of modern humanity.

In 1912, a woman named Clara Maier questioned Rudolf Steiner regarding a profession for her daughter, Lory, in dance or gymnastics. She asked whether one could, by means of rhythmic movements, stimulate and strengthen the naturally occurring life forces in human beings and thus promote healing. Their conversation led Rudolf Steiner to develop a series of exercises, gestures, and movements to the spoken word, which he taught to Lory. Thus, Eurythmy was officially born.

Initially, Eurythmy was a performance art used to enhance the “mystery plays” that Steiner had written. When the first Waldorf School was founded in 1919, Steiner strongly believed that Eurythmy should be part of the curriculum. He once said that Eurythmy and gardening were two absolute essentials in a true Waldorf School.

At Sanderling Waldorf School, students attend Eurythmy lessons from kindergarten through eighth grade, with each grade focusing on a developmentally appropriate curriculum.

Eurythmy as Visible Speech

As a movement art, Eurythmy is unique in that it accompanies speech and music. Eurythmy seeks to make speech visible through gestures that are primarily made with the arms and hands–though also with the feet and entire body. As the Eurythmist moves choreography through space, she expresses the specific sounds of speech that are being spoken for a verse or a story.

The movements in ballet and other forms of dance are the creations of individual artists. According to Steiner, the Eurythmic gestures for the vowel and consonant sounds are not artistically arbitrary but inherent in nature. Further, Eurythmy gestures reflect the way the larynx moves when shaping the current of breath so that they produce one or another sound. There are remarkable stop-action photos that show the larynx doing exactly this. Eurythmy, through movements made by the Eurythmist, shows the key expressive sounds of a verse or story. This is done in an artistic fashion, so that the beat, meter, stresses, and pauses are also made visible.

Eurythmy as Visible Music

In modern dance, a choreographer creates movements to accompany a piece of music, after which the dancer seeks to portray her own response to and interpretation of the music.

Tone Eurythmy, which is Eurythmy performed to music, endeavors to express the music through specific bodily gestures and movements identified by Rudolf Steiner. These gestures correspond to all the elements of music — notes, tone, interval, scale, and so on — in the way that piano keys represent specific notes and chords but gain individual expression through the skill and artistry of the pianist. Eurythmy, then, is a more objective expression of music. It makes visible the elements of the music according to certain fixed principles set forth by Steiner. Particular movements of the arms and hands show the pitch, the intervals between the notes, major and minor modes, and individual chords and notes.

The meandering of the melody and its stresses are expressed in the choreography being moved. The feet can emphasize the staccato notes or other aspects of the rhythm. The Eurythmist’s body is the instrument. Individual Eurythmists will present the same piece in different ways, but each will aim to manifest the intrinsic elements of the music rather than his or her own feelings about or reaction to it.

Eurythmy is performed and taught worldwide by professional Eurythmists who have completed a four or five-year full-time program at one of over twenty schools. Eurythmy is an essential integrating factor for all subjects and classes taught in the Waldorf school curriculum, deepening the process of learning by engaging the whole body in meaning-filled movement.

The Eurythmy curriculum offers exercises that deepen and expand a student’s understanding of the subjects being taught, including math, geometry, botany, physics, history, color, poetry, and music. It is the supreme example of the principle in all Steiner education that movement comes first, for it is the activity of the limbs which awakens and vitalizes the experience of the head.

How does Eurythmy address the developmental phases of childhood and align with the Waldorf Curriculum from Kindergarten through Eighth Grade?

In Pedagogical Eurythmy, there are three areas of movement instruction:

· Speech Eurythmy, which are specific gestures and movements that correspond to each sound of the spoken language.

· Tone Eurythmy, which are specific gestures and movements that correspond to every element of a musical composition.

· Copper rod exercises, which help the children to connect with and orient their own uprightness and balance in the surrounding space.

The goals of Eurythmy throughout the progression of the grades are:

· The gradual building of specific movement skills which are age-appropriate and designed to aid a child’s growth at specific developmental stages.

· Learning to implement these skills correctly within the context of language and music.

· Engaging in projects that encourage the children to find their own movement expression, using Eurythmy skills they have learned.

A Grade-By-Grade Window into Eurythmy: 

Kindergarten - Joyful movement.

In kindergarten, Eurythmy lessons are composed of stories in the mood of the folktale or rhyming songs and verses that correspond to the current season or festival. The aim in kindergarten Eurythmy is to gently guide the children, using their natural inclination for joyful movement, and have them imitate activities that are done in our daily lives or that take place in nature. The children are led to alternately stretch their limbs in large gestures and then make smaller, finer movements with fingers, toes, feet, and hands; in this way, they learn to use their will to move all parts of their bodies.

As a speech-based artistic approach to movement, Eurythmy is a specialty of Waldorf Kindergartens. Using speech as a medium, early childhood Eurythmy activates the coordination of the physical and cognitive senses. Unlike purely physical activities such as running, swinging, or balancing, the movement processes of Eurythmy build a bridge from the physical level to that of imagination and cognition.

In Eurythmy, movement and speech are connected in a meaningful way, i.e., the children don’t just say what they mean, but through the gestures and movements of Eurythmy, which are directly connected to the sounds of speech, they actually do what they mean.

The Eurythmy lesson also develops the social senses in the children through listening, taking in what is being said, and inwardly engaging with the story that is conveyed by the teacher. The children’s perception of their own body becomes coupled with their (mental) cognitive perceptions.  

When rhythmic speech is being moved, it imprints itself into the body memory and promotes the child’s understanding of words, language, imagination, movement expression, and social resonance. This makes Eurythmy in the kindergarten an effective tool for stimulating the faculties of speech, memory, thinking, and social skills.

First Grade - Guidance into form and space through imagination.

In first grade Eurythmy, all the exercises are designed to aid the children in developing greater awareness of left/right, up/down, and front/back spatial orientation. We also work to increase dexterity, coordination, and balance. In first grade, the social rather than the performance aspect of Eurythmy is emphasized, and, therefore, the children work mostly in a circle, imitating and following the movements of the teacher as opposed to an orientation toward an audience. Also, in first grade, much of the work involves helping the children find their way into a sense of form and order so that cooperative movement can take place.

The main part of the first-grade Eurythmy lesson is centered on fairy tales, which intentionally parallels the class’ main lesson. Through the telling of the fairy tales, the children practice Speech Eurythmy gestures that create living images of the alphabet, which the children experience through the movement of their limbs. Through performing the fairy tales, the children also experience how different characters require different types of movement. This experience nourishes a child’s ability for dramatic expression, which they demonstrate in their performance of the annual class play.

In first grade, the children learn to draw various forms from straight and curved lines. This is especially important as they are learning to write the letters of the alphabet. In Eurythmy, the children will practice choreography based on straight and curved lines within the context of a story. In this way, they absorb these forms through an act of will by moving their bodies in a living, imaginative way.  

Starting in first grade, piano music is included. The children now experience little dances and music for various activities, such as galloping and trotting, that take place within a story.  

Second Grade - Moving from unity into cooperative duality.

Second-grade Eurythmy lessons reflect the second-grade curriculum, centered on fairy tales, animal fables, as well as verses and prayers that relate to stories of noble people.

To quote from an article on second grade: “If the circle is a picture of First Grade, all whole and unified, each part sustaining the rest, the Second Grade may be seen as two parallel lines. For the child is no longer carried by the dreamy sense of security in all that encircles him but begins to experience a delicate quality of apartness, of ‘identity’. At this age, criticalness may suddenly appear, along with a tendency to squabble endlessly or feel persecuted by “everybody”, bereft of friends. The fables point out the foibles suddenly appearing all over; the legends of noble people calm, console, and reassure.”

Second-grade lessons include exercises and dances that may be performed in opposite pairs; they are designed to help the children cross the vertical midline, which is important for the development of mathematics and reading. The children learn to move mirror forms, which develops a sense of symmetry and is also an exercise that addresses the reversal of letter writing and dyslexia.

All the rhythmic exercises that were begun in first grade that aid the children in developing greater awareness of left/right, up/down, and front/back spatial orientation are continued in the second grade.

Third Grade - Awakening to self within one’s surroundings.

Third-grade students experience a greater sense of differentiation and separation between themselves and their surroundings. The children are becoming more independent and wish to meet the challenge of learning and memorizing the exercises so that they may lead their classmates or be called upon to perform something on their own.

At this stage of development, practicing contraction and expansion of the circle to both verse and music helps the children to experience harmonious, rhythmic breathing, as well as preventing them from separating too much.

More complex forms, such as spirals, figure eights, triangles, squares, and the Cassini Curve, are incorporated into the lessons.

The children now practice moving the rhythms of speech and music with precision. They also learn that Eurythmy is a “secret” language and that each sound of speech has a corresponding gesture. Now they are ready to learn consciously which sound each gesture represents.

In tone Eurythmy, third-grade students are ready to move from working with music in the pentatonic scale to working with pieces composed in the diatonic scale. The children practice the C major scale in a variety of ways and the major and minor third may be introduced.

The material in Eurythmy lessons relates to their main lesson curriculum with Old Testament or creation stories, Jewish Festivals, crafts such as spinning and baking, house-building, farming, and gardening.

Fourth Grade - Challenge, skill, and precision nurture a newfound sense of selfhood.

Once the children have crossed the Rubicon of the nine-year change, they are ready for more challenging and skill-based work.

Poetry that expresses the breathing quality between polarities, such as sorrow and joy, or fear and bravery, is used for a variety of forms and movement exercises. Speech Eurythmy exercises contain elements that differentiate grammatical components.

In tone Eurythmy, there is a continuation of practicing the precise movement of the rhythmic element of a piece of music; however, because the children are now more firmly grounded, the element of beat is introduced. One such Eurythmy exercise relates to the Norse Myth stories, which are part of the fourth-grade curriculum. For this exercise, the children move a form that creates the Walls of Asgard (which was built to protect the land of the Norse Gods and Goddesses) while strongly stepping to the beat of the music.

Tone Eurythmy pieces are also now performed with more complex geometric forms that include simple gestures for the melody of the music.

In 4th grade Eurythmy, the students are engaged in many exercises to help them develop greater coordination, concentration, dexterity, and control. The children often practice these exercises by holding firm to their own individual part against a partner, another group, or the entire class. They continue to work on exercises that develop the crossing of the vertical midline.

Movement that has been performed in a centrally oriented circle now can be exchanged for movement with a frontal orientation. This gives the children a different sense of spatial orientation, and with it, a new sense of self.

Fifth Grade - Practiced skills develop into the beauty of rhythm and form.

In fifth grade, the students work on many challenging and enlivening concentration, dexterity, and spatial orientation exercises. Students often use the copper rods to enhance their work.

The geometry of the human form (think of Leonardo da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man) is consciously experienced as the students move the five-pointed star to both verse and music. The teacher emphasizes and encourages the students to shape their gestures and movements so that the beauty, rhythm, and form of language and music are made visible to them. 

The texts for fifth-grade Eurythmy are often linked to their main lesson work on the ancient cultural epochs or botany. Poetry from foreign language lessons may also be introduced.

In tone Eurythmy, the gestures for various musical scales are practiced, while forms for two-part melodies or rounds may be introduced. Tone work is further developed by moving with precision to various tempos, rhythms, phrases, and the high and low voices of a musical composition.

A variety of complex and geometric forms based on figure eight, star or square are moved to both speech and music.

Sixth Grade - Finding security in structure and lawfulness.

The Sixth-grade curriculum includes the study of Ancient Rome and Roman law. Students in this phase are developing new capacities for judgment and look for clear structure, appropriate and fair consequences for law-breaking, and contracts for increasing responsibility to guide their relationships and actions.

By the sixth grade, the students have developed a capacity for spatial orientation. Spatial orientation exercises are performed on a variety of complex geometrical forms which adhere to the lawfulness of the geometry of the form. In addition, they may move tone Eurythmy on a geometrical form, especially along a six-pointed star or hexagon.

 At this point in the students’ development, movement may become heavy and/or unbalanced; therefore, practicing forms and exercises that are symmetrical and rhythmical may help to recreate the coordination that was taken for granted at an earlier stage of development.

Performing exercises that use the copper rod can help the students to form a clear inner image of their own spatial dimensions and boundaries.

Exercises should be performed with a clear sense of sequence and accuracy. Students are encouraged to perform their work with precision. A small group may be chosen to observe as their classmates work on an exercise; the purpose is to allow them to see outside of themselves what, until now, they have only experienced within. Giving helpful critiques about what is working well and what needs improvement strengthens observation while developing respect for others.

Students can now be given periodic “tests,” either individually or in pairs, on the exercises they have been practicing in their lessons.

Seventh Grade - Exploring the expression of soul moods in language and music.

Seventh Grade calls for greater precision and variety in speech and tone Eurythmy skills. The students explore the different moods in a poem or the range of feelings of various pieces of music, which expand the richness of their own growing soul experiences. Gestures for more complex emotions like joy and sorrow, laughter, and knowledge are introduced, as well as the expression of major and minor chords in music.

Students are now asked to create their own choreography based on the lawfulness of language and musical elements. More complicated geometric forms also provide the students with an experience of external structure.

More complex copper rod exercises are introduced which develop an upright posture for the students. Students work on many variations of these.

Eighth Grade - The fundamental laws of Eurythmy become the mode for elaborating spatial and soul elements in movement.

Work with eurythmical elements becomes more elaborate. In the eighth grade, the students study human anatomy and part of this study is the skeletal system. Because the gestures for the musical intervals are directly related to the human skeleton, eighth grade is the perfect time to introduce the intervals (prime through octave). This opens the door to a more refined artistic expression of the music.

 In tone and/or speech Eurythmy, forms may be choreographed for a solo, duo, or trio of students. The students may also work on complex forms for a larger group, thus cultivating greater social awareness through movement.

All the elements of tone Eurythmy that were previously learned, such as note gestures for the various scales, harmony (major, minor, dissonance gestures), rhythm beat, pitch, are now incorporated into a final Eurythmy piece. 

The soul gestures, which were introduced in the seventh grade, may now be incorporated into speech Eurythmy work on ballads, humorous pieces, or a simple fairy tale to be performed and shared with the lower grades of the school.

In the eighth grade, the students often have the opportunity to experience moving with silk veils; with this, they reach a new level of awareness of the surrounding space.

To sum up the aims and benefits of the Eurythmy program for students in a Waldorf School: 

The children experience:

· Movement, music, poetry, and stories in an age-appropriate and joyful way.

· Support and strengthen language development.

· Musicality and the power to listen.

· Integration: the coordination of hands, arms, legs, and spatial movement combined with eye, ear, and balance, as well as thought processes.

· Intentional movement that creates complex neural development.

· Develops a positive feeling toward focused attention.

· Joy and a sense of freedom in movement.

· Confidence and balance of the inner and outer social capacities.

· The ability to work on problem-solving collaboratively in their group.

· Creative thinking and action.

Indeed, the students of Sanderling Waldorf School are very fortunate to have the benefit of Eurythmy. This is especially so, given that their Eurythmy experiences are delivered by Ms. Amy who is a knowledgeable, experienced, and passionate Eurythmy teacher. Thank you, Ms. Amy, for all you do for our children!

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 Sections of this article are taken from:

• The Art of Eurythmy by Seth Morrison

• Why Do Our Schools Need Eurythmy? An Introduction to Eurythmy and its Healing Influence in Schools by Leonore Russell.

• Eurythmy Unveiled–Understanding a Subject Unique to Waldorf Education by Thomas Poplawski

• Eurythmy in Kindergarten by Sabine Deimann

• Sanderling Waldorf School Scope and Sequence for Eurythmy by Amy Schick