Eurythmy by Thomas Poplawski

Eurythmy by Thomas Poplawski

Author:Thomas Poplawski
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Floris Books
Published: 2020-06-15T00:00:00+00:00


We cannot help but notice how the performers do not so much walk or run but float across the stage. We sense a breathing relaxedness, a lightness, and a freedom of movement – free either to ascend to the heights or to delve into the dark depths, without the distracting and somewhat crude necessity of leaping into the air or rolling around on the floor. This uplifted feeling also stems from the higher centre of gravity from which the eurythmist takes her movement. Students of Tai-Chi or the martial arts learn to sense the source of movement in the lower tan t’ien(or dantian), a centre three inches below the navel, while many in ballet and modern dance follow the injunction of Isadora Duncan to move from the solar plexus. In eurythmy, movement is carried through the collar bone, allowing the arms to sing from this plane and the rest of the body to follow. The focus of our attention tends to be the expressiveness of the arms and hands. With the legs clothed in a long gown and even the most subtle movement of the arms accentuated by the rippling of the veil, we are drawn into the language of these limbs moving wing-like through the air. To an audience accustomed to the footwork of ballet or the ‘legginess’ of modern dance, this contrast can be disconcerting. The arm movements are harmonious (even in strength or great speed), rounded, full, engendering confidence and power without forsaking the potential for subtle expressiveness. Here we most readily experience the working with etheric movement, the movement quality of livingness. In this veritable flowing stream of continuous motion, the moving veils seem to create cloudlike forms which immediately dissolve only to reveal others which again disappear. Fixed positions are rarely assumed as one would in ballet; rather an entire piece tends to be an unbroken line of movement from the performers’ entry on the stage until their exit (even a pause is filled with charged motion). We note the lack of the technical virtuosity which a dance performance may highlight. The eurythmist may lend an intensity to a series of movements or accent with a dramatic gesture, but the movement shies away from athleticism and the harmony of the group’s united endeavor is stressed – an individual’s technique should not dilute the common imagination which is created.

The choreography of the moving figures can be confusing at first as we attempt intellectually to grasp at its meaning. The nature of the ‘revealed laws of nature’ of which we earlier spoke are not intellectually but rather artistically rendered and more subtly than directly presented. In this constant weaving of metamorphosing movement, patterns only gradually emerge and more often to the eyes of the feelings than those of analytical thinking. However, as we begin to sense the dynamics of what is, in essence, one breathing organism, rather than focusing on minutiae, we feel lifted out of everyday consciousness onto that plane of living movement. We move inwardly



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