Sound Circle Eurythmy

by David-Michael and Glenda Monasch

Five years ago, among the many things we wrote to describe our initiative for a new eurythmy training in Boulder, Colorado, we said:

....a particular feature will be a solid grounding in an understanding of the evolution of consciousness and its reflection in child development. As the absolute bedrock of Waldorf education, we believe a working knowledge of how these live in and through eurythmy will be the best possible preparation for our graduates to become vital contributors toward a renewal and strengthening of the pivotal role eurythmy is meant to play in Waldorf schools worldwide, but most especially on this continent. Toward this end, ...comprehensive artistic, theoretical and practical courses in all aspects of Waldorf pedagogy will be an essential feature of the Training from the very beginning....Another unique feature will be the focus on comparative movement studies... The students will attend a variety of dance and movement performances and workshops to enable them to clearly perceive and understand eurythmy’s unique place in the contemporary artistic, pedagogical, and therapeutic scene.... We envision an exciting four-year curriculum [to] address the needs of students at this time, preparing them to meet their future tasks with consciousness, capacity, and joy... The mission of Sound Circle Eurythmy is to increase understanding and appreciation for the artistic, educational, therapeutic, and social benefits of eurythmy and its unique role in the modern world by actively contributing to the cultural life of the Rocky Mountain region and beyond.

4th-Year students (Audrey Wiebe, center) perform at recital Dec 2013

With such intentions we founded the SCE Training to bring eurythmists into the world who would be discerning, responsive, and capable of meeting the great need for eurythmy in North America and in our time. Approaching now our first graduation, we would like to share something of the process of these last intensive years: the work of the SCE Training itself, as well as that of the SCE Ensemble. The latter needs to be included because we recognized even before beginning the Training, that in order for it to succeed, its students would have to be given the opportunity to see eurythmy, as well as to do it! So the work of the Ensemble, which was already active before the Training, needed to be expanded and enhanced.

moving in for our opening day, Sept 2010

moving again, Sept 2012

SCE Training

When Dorothea Mier came from New York to help inaugurate the new Training (only the second to be approved in North America) the first cohort consisted of fourteen women, about two-thirds of whom had been living in Colorado, with the rest moving here to take up the Training. We later discovered this was the largest First-Year group of that year anywhere in the world! As with eurythmy trainings everywhere, the winnowing process soon began. For some, the first year was a welcome immersion into anthroposophy and an artistic experience. For others, the strenuous challenges of becoming a eurythmist helped make clear that eurythmy and/or anthroposophy were not their path. Still others left for health or family issues. Now in their final year, the four women remaining have all made huge sacrifices to make it through the challenges inherent in such a life-changing process! They will have their Graduation Performance and Ceremony on May 31, before traveling to Dornach, Switzerland where they will join students from eurythmy trainings around the world for the annual Graduation Meeting at the Goetheanum.

So what have the students actually been doing for four years? For four hours every morning of the school year, they moved together, delving deeply into the mysteries of music theory, poetry, Apollonian and Dionysian qualities, “soul gestures,” the rich world of color, the unique and profound eurythmic expression of the planets and zodiac, musical tones and intervals, and (always and again) the manifold universe of the sounds of speech. First and foremost, Rudolf Steiner wanted eurythmy to be the visible expression of the WORD, in all its variety, and as manifest in different cultures and languages.

4th-Year students Audrey Wiebe, Mary Elizabeth Lenahan

2nd-Year students perform at Recital in December 2013

Year by year, the students have become evermore expressive instruments, transforming themselves into vessels for “visible speech” and “visible song.” Friends and families who have attended their recitals over the past four years have been consistently amazed to see how these beloved spouses/mothers/sisters/colleagues have grown and changed, becoming ever more fluid, supple, and harmonious. Many times, audience members at these recitals have been more able to see students’ enormous growth than have the students themselves! This was also true for our Goetheanumappointed Training-in-Development mentor Shaina Stoehr, from West Midlands Eurythmy Training in the UK; her annual three-week visits have been invaluable to the development of our whole program.

While clearly a uniquely focused specialization, a eurythmy training at the same time exposes students to an all-encompassing and comprehensive development of one’s human capacities. Accompanying the purely eurythmic work for four years are specialty classes, which enhance, deepen, and widen the students’ sense of all that can live in eurythmy, while preparing them to carry it into the world. These classes, on afternoons and evenings, included Anatomy-Physiology, Form Drawing, Sculpture, Astronomy, Poetics (Parzival, Faust, Goethe and Schiller, epiclyric-dramatic, Rudolf Steiner’s Mystery Plays), Speech Formation, Painting, Art History, Anthroposophy, Threefolding, etc. The festival life of the year has also been an ongoing thread throughout the training.

4th-Year students at the end of a long day

As the students became increasingly adept and confident, they also began participating in local events in the wider community. This has included working into the life of the local Waldorf schools (performing for the regional Pentathlon, helping with festival programs, appearing at assemblies) and especially serving as apprentices in SCE Ensemble presentations. While keenly aware of all they don’t know, and with a certain trepidation about the future, each is also growing into competent, creative, and uniquely individual artists-teachers, increasingly eager to face the tasks for which they have been so diligently preparing!

How far this inaugural group has come is readily apparent to the Second Year students, who began in September 2012. This delightful and lively group brings a whole new sense of future possibilities to our efforts and they have made great progress over their first two years of training. Many had some Waldorf background before arriving in Boulder and they bring a powerful social initiative to bear on all our work!

SCE Ensemble

SCE co-director Glenda Monasch as Queen Bee in What the Bee Knows, 2012

With a somewhat changing roster of eurythmists, musicians, speakers and lighters, the SCE Ensemble has begun making itself known across Colorado. While often performing for Waldorf school audiences, we have made a point of appearing in as many public venues as possible, including the University of Colorado, Boulder; Cleo Parker Robinson Theatre, Denver; Bas Bleu Theatre, Fort Collins; Lakewood Cultural Center, Lakewood. Since 2010, the full evening programs Chiaroscuro and What the Bee Knows were presented, as well as the children’s programs 'Winged Wonders' and 'Farmyard Fables'. In addition to the inclusion of SCE Training students as apprentices, a special feature of many of these performances, provides an opportunity for Waldorf school children to perform with us, another measure of our service to our community. In this regard the Ensemble also regularly contributes to the annual All Souls’ Celebration, the regional Waldorf Fifth Grade Pentathlon, the Boulder Public Library’s Dance is for Every Body weekend, as well as smaller inhouse Waldorf school festivals and events. We are currently rehearsing Celtic Treasures, our newest children’s program, which will tour in March and April 2014.

Toward the Future

It is our intention and hope to begin a new First-Year group in September 2014. If you or someone you know is considering eurythmy as a life path, we invite you/them to visit us in Boulder to explore whether SCE might be the place to take the next steps. We are also planning to offer our first Fifth-Year Artistic Post-Graduate Course, from October 2014 to April 2015, for those already holding a certified eurythmy diploma. They will help create the Ensemble’s 2015 performances, including a full evening program exploring the theme of Water, for which we are negotiating collaborations with public venues in Boulder as well as artists from across the country. See soundcircleeurythmy.org for information about both courses, as well as further details about eurythmy and SCE. Please consider adding your name to our monthly email update list and to becoming a donor to help SCE move into the future.

SCE Ensemble performs in What the Bee Knows

David-Michael Monasch dmm@soundcircleeurythmy.org and Glenda Monasch gem@soundcircleeurythmy.org are the co-founders and directors of Sound Circle Eurythmy. Between them they have over 65 years’ experience teaching and performing eurythmy!

Student Reflections

“My first semester of Eurythmy Training was so rich and full... So many thoughts brought to our tone eurythmy lessons spoke very deeply to me. For example, that we human beings were created out of a kind of weaving~work of other great spiritual beings, and that we can see in different parts of our physical structure (such as the shape of our collar bones) a kind of imprint or “writing” of those great beings’ movements; that their breathing, their dancing, their singing, can be traced in our being! How beautiful to view the shape of our head as relating to the sun, our torso to the moon, our limbs as gifts from the stars. As one who loves life and music, I cannot think of a more compelling task to take up than learning how to tune my being as an instrument through which I can sing back out to the cosmos from which I came!” — Andréa Moreno-Beals, Second-Year student

“I am in love, love, love with tone eurythmy! I am overjoyed with what the interval brings to a musical piece, how it allows us to express our soul and what is occurring in the music. I am continually striving with my ear training. I would like to be stronger in identifying tones, intervals, major, minor, and dissonance. I may not be able to clearly tell an interval from just my ear but when I listen with my entire being I can sense where I feel it in my body and gestalt. I am learning a different way to hear and feel the music.” — Chelaine Kokos, Second-Year student

SCE Ensemble (Cristina Geck, Isabella Guardia, David-Michael Monasch)

“[This term] we worked on the Zodiac. I would put this in the great big bin marked ‘things I had no clue I would touch when I entered the eurythmy training.’ What a beautiful gem it has turned out to be. I know the eurythmic zodiac is not astrology, but both are kinds of spiritual map. I love maps! Sometimes when we are doing the sequence of eights with the zodiacal gestures and their corresponding sounds, I feel like we have passed through 20 years of life. I guess it could be part of the nature of those constellations.” — Amanda Leonard, Fourth-Year student

“This semester, I am finding myself delving into what it means to be fully with the speech sounds. With our discussion about being ‘artistic,’ I realize there is more than one definition or interpretation of what artistic means. I want to find that place in myself that can fully access the speech sounds...” — Mary Elizabeth Lenahan,

“Fourth year training poses both a great challenge and a great opportunity. I am acutely aware that there is still so much I do not know, understand, or cannot embody within my instrument and I am wanting to engage, explore, and attempt to embody as much as possible..... I need to overcome any selfdoubt and self-consciousness that inhibits my capacity to allow the eurythmy, tone or speech, to unfold.” - Terryann Stilwell Masotti, Fourth- Year student

SCE Ensemble performs in What the Bee Knows