I was watching Barbara and Mikko's show in the Goetheanum on Saturday evening and felt somewhat left out of the proceedings but it wasn't until the small hours of Monday that I came to realise what the problem was; it seems to me that for a contemporary eurythmy performance to become effective we must find different ways of including the audience into what we are trying to say. Spiritual content can no longer be passed down from the high altar but the audience needs to be brought  towards the sphere where a communication can take place. There is a great responsibility put on the shoulders of the performers they must open up to the audience, treating as them as spiritual identities, and, at least, for the duration of the performance develop an interest in their path.

We can  use colour on stage to help in this process, helping the audience away from a purely physical visual experience so that they can enter into those places where the eurythmy has its roots so that a communion can take place.

It is an interesting question as to whether the traditional stage form is the best place to perform contemporary eurythmy, since my experinces in Berlin I have great doubts, but in any case (new)eurythmy will only ever be effective in the 21st century when the performers have the ambition to be responsible for each others spiritual development and to include the audience in that development.

I was in Berlin at the end of June lighting some Eurythmy for the annual general meeting of the German Anthroposphic society which was held in the small hall of the Philharmonie there. The nature of the space was that the the audience sat all around the performing space, for the most of the performers this was an unusual experience but for  few of us it was also a realisation of how much a new consciousness of the other was necessary to be able to perform in such a space. There are many analogies to be found  between  a church and a theatre the priest/performer acting as the intermediary between the spiritual and the physical but the old forms seem to be inadequate. Both the performers and the audience has come together so share, true the performers have decided to accompany one another for a while on their journey, the audience are passing through, strangers on the same journey.

I suppose most of you are wondering what is this all about?

(!(since this is a blog do not expect to find here thoughts that have a finality about them but rather that are undergoing constant revision)!)

The idea is to find a place that would become the permanent or temporary home for a group of people whose main connection is just the fact that they share unanswered questions as to the nature of the spiritual path that they are on. For the more permanent members that i think mean that they are also willing ( and able?) to take on a certain responsibility for the spiritual development of the other members, as a conscious act. This idea is not so new for me, it was very much a part of my 'anthroposophic years' in Holland, and has become an ideal in various disguises that could be applied to many parts of my life.

Most importantly for me is to lose the 'it' as if all of this was some impersonal far fetched fantasy and use the'I' which is anyhow that part of us that joins us to the spiritual realities.

(If you are looking for some bedtime reading I suggest that you try for a start Dieter Brüll's Gemeinschaft und Gemeinsamkeit.)

........

At this moment time stops still,
To take a breath,
And then move on again.



We pass through,
On our way from birth through death,
We meet and part or remain


No signpost at the crossroads,
The classroom is empty,
The paper plain.



We are children before the sun
And grow old,
Let loss be its own gain.