Eurythmy is an art of movement essential to Waldorf education. Accompanied by live instrumental music or by the human voice in spoken poetry and tales, eurythmy has been called “visible song” and “visible speech”. It was brought into being by Rudolf Steiner as a performing art in 1912, and within a decade had evolved into an educational art and a healing art as well. In eurythmy lessons, each child at a Waldorf school learns to become attentive to the variety of sounds, rhythms, and images in a poem or piece of music. They are led in differentiated arm movements that express the inner feeling and creative force of the vowels and consonants or the tones and intervals. Moving through the room with others in choreographed geometric or asymmetric forms, the participants also focus on conveying the rhythm, phrasing, and dynamics of the piece. Continue…