By Meeta Grovor
It’s been a little while since the “Intercultural Eurythmy Festival” in London which took place at Rudolf Steiner House in early July this year. Now it already seems more like a beautiful but distant dream. Away from the humdrum of daily life, the festival was a wonderful culmination of our Eurythmy India tour which featured scenes from Shakepeare’s King Lear, brought into a seamless flow between Eurythmy and Drama. Seventeen performers with three musicians and two teachers travelled across Germany, Switzerland and the United Kingdom!! Our production had dialogues which were mainly in English but also in Hindi, Nepali and Chinese! We moved to the music played on the piano as well as the sitar and tabla. What an experience it was!
The Intercultural Eurythmy Festival took everything we were offering to a different level. We not only performed for the wonderful audience there, but enabled them to participate in moving with us to sitar in one of our workshops. There were so many takers for the workshops on ‘Eurythmy and Classical Indian Dance’, ‘Eurythmy, Yoga and Chanting’ and ‘Eurythmy in Mandarin’. The enthusiasm by participants to explore was so heartwarming! In our own way, irrespective of our backgrounds (Spanish, African, Indian, British etc.) we were all looking for an amalgamation of our own culture with the world that opened up for us through Eurythmy. We held similar questions and were extremely open to the sharings from each other. We also got to experience Eurythmy workshops by teachers from other schools and that was a lot of fun too.
“The Golden ball” performance by the Peredur Eurythmy group with its beautiful music, colourful costumes and smooth performances was awe inspiring. The stage lights made it all truly magical not just for the children but for us adults too. On the one hand their performance made us forget our own lives and took us on a beautiful journey with Natalia and her brother; and on the other it was a reminder of how we can easily get caught in a web of our own in modern times (this world could be the virtual world many seem to be living in today or perhaps the alluring high of drugs). Full credit to the West Midlands stage group. They performed excerpts from many Shakespeare texts and their interpretation in Eurythmy was more modern and hence very exciting for new eurythmists like myself. Eurythmy was brought alive in such a way that the audience remained glued to their chairs!
Throughout the whole of Steiner House, and for the many audience members, there was a buzz of enthusiasm of children and adults alike. Heartfelt gratitude to Adrian Locher and Chrystal Hayn who made this coming together possible for us. Their hard work definitely was visible in how we were looked after for the entire time we were in London. Thank you to our hosts, sponsors, audiences and all the performers, musicians and teachers for this wonderful experience. May we have many more such platforms where we can celebrate Eurythmy together and learn from each other!
Meeta Grovor is a Eurythmist trained from Eurythmy India and resides in Hyderabad, India. She works with Sloka Waldorf school, Sahasra- centre for learning, and Devodhyog Foundation for adults with special needs.
I began my professional journey as a software engineer years ago, when I met Eurythmy it allowed me to experience an integration of my head, heart and limbs. I hope to spread wellbeing, joy and harmony in the world!