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If Cassandra and Eurythmy

I went to see If Cassandra at the Riverside Studios. I can’t say I comprehended it very well.

The blurb goes: Three women meet, wanting to spend a pleasant evening together. Despite their best efforts, noise, music and unexpected events repeatedly disturb the meal and the women are forced make repeated new beginnings: a process full of frustrations but also fresh possibilities. A poetic and tragi-comic composition of sounds, images and situations…

I have some experience of dance theatre and also pf the physical, visual spectrum and this piece fitted in to that.

I found some images intriguing, some particularly towards the end quite powerful. I also found some of the language of the movement towards the end quite absorbing.

However, the structure of the repetition of the meal left me a little cold, particularly the start which felt very awkward particularly compared to some of the physicality in the last quarter.

But, I must confess to knowing little about eurythmy, which I think was a core process used in this piece.

I learnt this about eurythmy here, and see below. I now think I don’t have the language to understand the process fully, but wonder about how many of the gestures were feelings being made visual.

Eurythmy is a movement art initiated by Rudolf Steiner in 1912, as the art of visible speech and visible song. Originally conceived as a performance art, eurythmy has unlimited possibilities in the field of experiencing spirituality through movement. It bears relationship to the ancient forms of sacred dance, yet it is wholly secular in its character. Eurythmy is used in medical, pedagogical and sociological fields. It is an essential part of Waldorf education, providing the somatic component of the multi-modal learning experience unique to the Waldorf curriculum.

The sounds of speech can all be experienced as particular feelings, with specific sculptural components that are then made visible through gesture movements. The dynamics, rhythms and meaning of language offer the components of the choreography of eurythmy forms. Similarly, the beat, rhythm, pitch, tones and intervals of music can be experienced somatically and brought into visual expression.

October 5, 2005 | Filed Under  

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  • About me

    I'm a playwright and investment analyst. I have a broad range of interests: food, gardening, innovation & intellectual property, sustainability, architecture & design, writing and the arts. I sit on the board of Talawa Theatre Company and advise a CIS investment trust on socially responsible investments.

  • Recent Work

    Recent plays include, for theatre: Nakamitsu, Yellow Gentlemen, Lost in Peru, Lemon Love. For radio: Places in Between (R4), Patent Breaking Life Saving (WS).

  • Nakamitsu

  • Yellow Gentlemen