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Eurythmy

Eurythmy

Eurythmy is an expressive movement art originated by Rudolf Steiner in conjunction with Marie von Sivers in the early 20th century. Primarily a performance art, it is also used in education, especially in Waldorf schools, and as a movement therapy.

The word eurythmy stems from Greek roots meaning beautiful or harmonious rhythm; the term was used by Greek and Roman architects to refer to the harmonious proportions of a design or building.

Movement repertoire

The gestures in the eurythmist's movement repertoire relate to the sounds and rhythms of speech, to the tones and rhythms of music and to soul experiences, such as joy and sorrow. Once these fundamental repertoire elements are learned, they can be composed into free artistic expressions. The eurythmist also cultivates a feeling for the qualities of straight lines and curves, the directions of movement in space (forward, backward, up, down, left, right), contraction and expansion, and color. The element of color is also emphasized both through the costuming, usually given characteristic colors for a piece or part and formed of long, loose fabrics that accentuate the movements rather than the bodily form, and through the lighting, which saturates the space and changes with the moods of the piece.

Eurythmy's aim is to bring the artists' expressive movement and both the performers' and audience's feeling experience into harmony with a piece's content; eurythmy is thus sometimes called "visible music" or "visible speech", expressions that originate with its founder, Rudolf Steiner, who described eurythmy as an "art of the soul".

Most eurythmy today is performed to classical (concert) music or texts such as poetry or stories. Silent pieces are also sometimes performed.

Eurythmy with music

When performing eurythmy with music (also called tone eurythmy), the three major elements of music, melody, harmony and rhythm, are all expressed.The melody is primarily conveyed through expressing its rise and fall; the specific pitches; and the intervallic qualities present. Harmony is expressed through movement between tension and release, as expressions of dissonance and consonance, and between the more inwardly directed minor mood and the outwardly directed major mood. Rhythm is chiefly conveyed through livelier and more contoured movements for quick notes, slower, dreamier movements for longer notes; in addition, longer tones move into the more passive (listening) back space, quicker tones into the more active front space.

Breaths or pauses are expressed through a larger or smaller movement in space, giving new impulse to what follows. Beat is conveyed through greater emphasis of downbeats, or those beats upon which stress is normally placed. Beat is generally treated as a subsidiary element. Eurythmy has only occasionally been done to popular music, in which beat plays a large role.

The timbre of individual instruments is brought into the quality both of the tonal gestures and of the whole movement of the eurythmist. Usually there will be a different eurythmist or group of eurythmists expressing each instrument, for example in chamber or symphonic music.

A piece's choreography usually expresses elements such as the major or minor key, the shape of the melody line, the interplay between voices or instruments and the relative dominance of one or another voice or instrument. Thus, musicians can often follow even the finest details of their part in the movements of the eurythmists on stage. Particular musical forms (e.g. the sonata) can have special characteristic choreographic expressions.

Eurythmy with spoken texts

Eurythmy is often performed with spoken texts such as poetry, stories or plays. Speech eurythmy includes such elements as the sounds of speech, rhythms, poetic meters,grammar and mood. In speech eurythmy, all the sounds of language have characteristic gestural qualities: the sound of an 'Ah' is formed by raising your arms over your head in a v-shape, designed to show the open quality of that sound. An 'n', however, uses a sharper, jerking movement (as if touching something hot and then jerking your hands up), again complementing the sound of the letter. Note that it is the audible sounds themselves, not the letters of the written language, that are expressed. 

History

Eurythmy was born in 1911 when a widow brought her young daughter, Lory Smits, who was interested in movement and dance, to the Austrian philosopher Rudolf Steiner. Due to the recent loss of her father, it was necessary for the girl to find a career. Steiner's advice was sought; he suggested that the girl begin working on a new art of movement. As preparation for this, she began to study human anatomy, to explore the human step, to contemplate the movement implicit in Greek sculpture and dance, and to find movements that would express spoken sentences using the sounds of speech. Soon a number of other young people became interested in this form of expressive movement.

During these years, Steiner was writing a new drama each year for performance at the Anthroposophical Society's summer gatherings; beginning in 1912, he began to incorporate the new art of movement into these dramas. When the Society decided to build an artistic center in Dornach, Switzerland (this later became known as the Goetheanum) a small stage group began work and offered weekly performances of the developing art. Marie Steiner-von Sivers, Steiner's wife, who was a trained actress and speech artist, was given responsibility for training and directing this ensemble. This first eurythmy ensemble went on tour in 1919, performing across Switzerland, the Netherlands and Germany.

Steiner saw eurythmy as a unique expression of the anthroposophical impulse:

It is the task of Anthroposophy to bring a greater depth, a wider vision and a more living spirit into the other forms of art. But the art of Eurythmy could only grow up out of the soul of Anthroposophy; could only receive its inspiration through a purely Anthroposophical conception.

—Rudolf Steiner

In 1924, Steiner gave two intensive workshops on different aspects of eurythmy; transcripts of his talks during these workshops are published as Eurythmy as Visible Speech andEurythmy as Visible Singing.

Eurythmy ensembles in Stuttgart, Germany and at the Goetheanum soon became established parts of the cultural life of Europe. The Goetheanum ensemble was recognized with a gold medal at the Paris Expo of 1937/8. The Stuttgart training and ensemble, led by Else Klink, had to close in the Nazi period but reopened shortly after the close of World War II. There are now training centers and artistic ensembles in many countries.

Eurythmy as a performing art

There are notable eurythmy ensembles in Dornach, Switzerland; Stuttgart, Germany; The Hague, Netherlands; London, England; Järna, Sweden, and Chestnut Ridge, New York(near New York City). All of these groups both perform locally and tour internationally. Many smaller performing groups also exist (see list). High schools that have their own performing ensembles include the San Francisco Waldorf High School ensemble.

Pedagogical eurythmy

When the first Waldorf School was founded in 1919, Eurythmy was included in the curriculum.It was quickly recognized as a successful complement to gymnastics in the school's movement program and is now taught in most Waldorf schools, as well as in many non-Waldorf pre-school centers, kindergartens and schools. It is taught to all ages from pre-schools through high school and into college. Its purpose is to awaken and strengthen the expressive capacities of children through movement, stimulating the child to bringimagination, ideation and conceptualization to the point where they can manifest these as "vital, moving forms" in physical space.

Eurythmy pedagogical exercises begin with the straight line and curve and proceed through successively more complicated geometric figures and choreographed forms, developing a child's coordination and concentration. An extensive set of special exercises has also been developed for pedagogical purposes.These include metamorphosing geometric patterns and dynamic movement sequences.

Rods or balls are sometimes used in exercises to develop precision in movement, to expand the experience of space, and to objectify the movement experience. The rods are usually approximately the length of an arm; the balls are of a size to fit comfortably in one hand. Both are generally made of copper, a material receptive to warmth. Various therapeutic exercises also employ these.

Though there are some independent post-graduate trainings for pedagogical eurythmy, this aspect is frequently included in courses focusing on artistic work.

Therapeutic eurythmy

Eurythmy is used therapeutically, normally on the advice of a physician, to compensate for somatic or psychological imbalances; the aim is to strengthen the organism'ssalutogenic capacity to heal itself. Case studies suggest that therapeutic eurythmy may be helpful for children with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).

There are post-graduate trainings in the therapeutic use of eurythmy.

Socially therapeutic uses of eurythmy

Eurythmy has also been used in many social contexts, including workplaces and prisons, with the aim of rejuvenating individuals and their social relationships.

Osho Rajneesh: Whirling Meditation Technique

Osho discourse on Whirling Meditation Technique

Osho: The first meditation, which you will be doing in the morning, is related to the rising sun. It is a morning meditation. When the sleep is broken the whole of nature becomes alive. The night has gone, the darkness is no more, the sun is coming up, and everything becomes conscious and alert. So this first meditation is a meditation in which you have to be continuously alert, conscious, aware, whatsoever you do. The first step, breathing; the second step, catharsis; the third step, the mantra, the mahamantra: HOO.

Remain a witness. Don't get lost. It is easy to get lost. While you are breathing you can forget; you can become one with the breathing so much that you can forget the witness. But then you miss the point. Breathe as fast, as deep as possible, bring your total energy to it, but still remain a witness. Observe what is happening as if you are just a spectator, as if the whole thing is happening to somebody else, as if the whole thing is happening in the body and the consciousness is just centered and looking. This witnessing has to be carried in all the three steps. And when everything stops- and in the fourth step you have become completely inactive, frozen-then this alertness will come to its peak.

In the afternoon meditation -- kirtan, dancing, singing -- another inner work has to be done. In the morning you have to be fully conscious; in the afternoon meditation you have to be half conscious, half unconscious. It is a noontide meditation -- when you are alert, but you feel sleepy. It is just like a man who is under the influence of some intoxicant. He walks, but cannot walk rightly; he knows where he is going, but everything is dim. He is conscious and not conscious.

He knows he has taken alcohol, he knows his feet are wavering, but he knows this half-asleep, half-awake. So in the afternoon meditation remember this -- act as if you are intoxicated, drunk, ecstatic. Sometimes you will forget yourself completely like a drunkard, sometimes you will remember, but don't try to be conscious just like the morning, no. Move with the day -- half-half in the noon. Then you are in tune with nature.

In the night, just the opposite of the morning -- be completely unconscious; don't bother at all. The night has come, the sun has set, now everything is moving into unconsciousness. Move into unconsciousness.

This whirling, Sufi whirling, is one of the most ancient techniques, one of the most forceful. It is so deep that even a single experience can make you totally different. You have to whirl with open eyes, just like small children go on twirling, as if your inner being has become a center and your whole body has become like a wheel, moving- a potter's wheel, moving. You are in the center, but the whole body is moving.

Start slowly, clockwise. If somebody feels it is very difficult to move clockwise then anti-clockwise, but the rule is to move clockwise. If a few people are left-handed then they may feel it difficult; they can move anti-clockwise. And almost ten percent of people are left-handed, so if you find that clockwise you feel uneasy, move anti-clockwise; but start with clockwise, then feel. Music will be there, slow, just to help you. In the beginning move very slowly; don't go fast, but very slowly, enjoying.

And then, by and by, go faster. The first fifteen minutes, go slowly; the second fifteen minutes, fast; the third fifteen minutes, faster; the fourth fifteen minutes, just completely mad. And then your total energy, you, become a whirlpool, an energy whirlpool, lost completely in it: no witnessing, no effort to observe. Don't try to see; be the whirlpool, be the whirling. One hour.

In the beginning you may not be able to stand so long, but remember one thing, don't stop by yourself, don't stop the whirling. If you feel it is impossible the body will fall down automatically, but don't you stop. If you fall down in the middle of the hour there is no problem; the process is complete. But don't play tricks with yourself, don't deceive; don't think that now you are tired so it is better to stop.

No, don't make it a decision on your part. If you are tired, how can you go on? You will fall automatically. So don't stop yourself; let the whirling itself come to a point where you fall down. When you fall down, fall down on your stomach; and it will be good if your stomach is in direct touch with the earth. Then close the eyes. Lie down on the earth as if lying down on the breast of your mother, a small child lying down on the breast of the mother. Become completely unconscious. And this whirling will help.

Whirling gives intoxication to the body. It is a chemical thing, it gives you intoxication, to be exact. That's why sometimes you may feel giddy just like a drunkard. What is happening to the drunkard? Hidden behind your ears is a sixth sense, the sense of balance. When you take any drink, any alcoholic thing, any intoxicating drug, it goes directly to the center of balance in the ear and disturbs it. That's why a drunkard cannot walk, feels dizzy. The same happens in whirling.

If you whirl, really, the effect will be the same: you will feel intoxicated, drunk. But enjoy this drunkenness is worth something. This being in a drunken state is what Sufis have been calling ecstasy, masti. In the beginning you may feel giddy, in the beginning sometimes you may feel nausea, but within two, three days, these feelings will disappear and by the fourth day you will feel a new energy in you that you have never known before. Then giddiness will disappear, and just a smooth feeling of drunkenness will be there. So don't try to be alert about what is happening. Let it happen and become one with the happening.

In the morning, alert; in the afternoon, half alert, half unalert; in the night, completely unalert. The circle is complete. And then fall down on the ground on your stomach. If anybody feels any sort of pain in the navel center lying down on the ground, then he can turn on the back, otherwise not. If you feel something, a very deep painful sensation in the stomach, then turn on your back, otherwise not. The navel in contact with the earth will give you such a blissful feeling -- just the same as once you had, but now you have forgotten, when you were a child lying down on your mother's breast, completely unaware of any worry, any anxiety, so one with the mother, your heart beating with her heart, your breath in tune with her breath.

 The same will happen with the earth because earth is the mother. That's why Hindus have been calling earth the mother and sky the father. Be rooted in it. Feel a merger as if you have dissolved. The body has become one with the earth; the form is there no more. Only earth exists; you are not there. This is what I mean when I say break the cup completely: forget that you are. The earth is, and dissolve in it.

During the one hour of whirling the music will continue. Many will fall before the hour but everybody has to fall by the time the music stops. So if you feel that you are still not in the state of falling then go faster and faster. After forty-five minutes go completely mad, so by the time the hour is complete you have fallen. And the feeling if falling is beautiful, so don't manipulate it. Fall, and when you have fallen then turn on your stomach, be merged, close your eyes. This merger has to be there for one hour.

So the night meditation will be of two hours, from seven o'clock to nine o'clock. Don't eat anything before it. At nine o'clock the suggestion will be given to come out of this deep drunkenness, this ecstasy. Even out of it you may not be able to walk correctly, but don't be disturbed, enjoy it. Then take your food and go to sleep.

Another new thing, I will not be there; only my empty chair will be there. But don't miss me because in a sense I will be there, and in a sense there has always been an empty chair before you. Right now the chair is empty because there is no one sitting in it. I am talking to you but there is no one who is talking to you. It is difficult to understand, but when the ego disappears processes can continue. Talking can continue, sitting and walking and eating can continue, but the center has disappeared.

Even now, the chair is empty. But I was always with you up till now in all the camps because you were not ready. Now I feel you are ready. And you must be helped to get more ready to work in my absence, because feeling that I am there you may feel a certain enthusiasm that is false. Just feeling that I am present you may do things which you never wanted to do; just to impress me you may exert more. That is not of much help, because only that can be helpful which comes out of your being. My chair will be there, I will be watching you, but you feel completely free. And don't think that I am not there because that may depress you, and then that depression will disturb your meditation.

I will be there, and if you meditate rightly whenever your meditation is exactly tuned, you will see me. So that will be the criterion of whether you are really meditating or not. Many of you will be able to see me more intensely than you can see me right now, and whenever you see me, you can be certain that things are happening in a right direction. So this will be the criterion. By the end of this camp I hope ninety percent of you will have seen me. Ten percent may miss because of their minds.

So if you see me don't start thinking about it, what is happening, don't start thinking whether it is imagination or a projection or am I really there. Don't think, because if you think immediately I will disappear; thinking will become a barrier. The dust will come on the mirror and there will be no reflection. Whenever the dust is not there, suddenly you will become aware of me more than you can be aware here right now. To be aware of the physical body is not much awareness; to be aware of the nonphysical being is real awareness.

You must learn to work without me. You cannot be here always, you will have to go far away; you cannot hang around me forever, you have other works to do. You have come from different countries all over the world; you will have to go. For a few days you will be here with me, but if you become addicted to my physical presence then rather than being a help it may become a disturbance, because then when you go away, you will miss me. Your meditation should be such here that it can happen without my presence, then wherever you go the meditation will not be in any way affected.

And this too has to be remembered: I cannot always be in this physical body with you; one day or another the physical vehicle has to be dropped. My work is complete as far as I am concerned. If I am carrying this physical vehicle, it is just for you; some day, it has to be dropped. Before it happens you must be ready to work in my absence, or in my nonphysical presence which means the same. And once you can feel me in my absence you are free of me, and then even if I am not here in this body the contact will not be lost.

It always happens when a Buddha is there: his physical presence becomes so meaningful. and then he dies. Everything is shattered. Even a disciple like Ananda, his most intimate disciple, started crying and weeping when Buddha said, "Now I have to leave this body." For forty years Ananda was with Buddha, twenty-four hours, just like a shadow. He started crying and weeping like a child; suddenly he had become an orphan. Buddha asked," What are you doing?"

Ananda said, "It will be impossible now for me to grow. I couldn't grow when you were there so how can I grow now? It may be now millions of lives before I come across a buddha again, so I am lost."

Buddha said, "My understanding is different, Ananda. When I am not there you may become enlightened immediately, because this has been my feeling -- you have become too much attached to me, and that attachment is working like a block. You have become too much attached to me; that very attachment is working like a barrier."

And this happened as Buddha said. The day Buddha died, Ananda became enlightened. There was nothing to cling to then. But why wait? When I die, then you will become enlightened? Why wait?

My chair can be empty; you can feel my absence. And remember, only when you can feel my absence can you feel my presence. If you cannot see me while my physical vehicle is not there, you have not seen me at all. This is my promise: I will be there in the empty chair, the empty chair will not really be empty. So behave! The chair will not be empty, but it is better that you learn to be in contact with my nonphysical being. That is a deeper, more intimate touch and contact.

That is why I say a new phase of my work starts with this camp, and I am calling it a Samadhi Sadhana Shibir. It is not only meditation, it is absolute ecstasy that I am going to teach to you. It is not only the first step, it is the last. Only no mind on your part is needed and everything is ready. Just be alert not to think much. The remaining time between these three meditations, remain more and more silent, don't talk. If you want to do something, laugh, dance: do something intense and physical but not mental.

 Go for a long walk, go jogging on the grounds, jump under the sun, lie down on the earth, look at the sky, enjoy, but don't allow the mind to function much. Laugh, cry, weep, but don't think. If you can be without thinking for these three meditations and the time between them, then after three, four days you will feel suddenly a burden has disappeared. The heart has become light, the body weightless and you are ready to take a jump into the unknown.

Basic principles of Theater of Mysteries

Foundation and pillars of theater of mysteries...

Mysterie Artist...

 Middle pillar of Artist/Art Work (comparing to kabbalah)...

GURDJIEFF SACRED DANCES

GEORGE IVANOVITCH GURDJIEFF

G.I.Gurdjieff (1877-1949) was born in Alexandropol, (between Russia and Turkey) and trained in Kars as both a priest and a physician. For some twenty years, Gurdjieff travelled in the remotest region of the Central Asia and the Middle East in search of a hidden knowledge with a group of Remarkable Men. These years were crucial in the moulding of his thought. On his return, he began to gather pupils in Moscow before the first World War and continued his work with a small party of followers while moving, during the year of the Russian revolution, to Essentuki in the Caucasus, and then through Tiflis, Constantinople, Berlin and London to the Chateau du Prieuré near Paris, where he re-opened his Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man in 1922 on a larger scale.

G. I. Gurdjieff -Meetings with Remarkable Men-

G.I.Gurdjieff used the word "WORK" as inner-search for self-development.
He gave particular attention to the body as a tool, for the WORK, through the practice of Sacred Dances and Movements, inner exercises and self observation, both while dancing and specially in normal life situations.
One of his most famous statement related to it is:

"Remember yourself always and everywhere."

GURDJIEFF SACRED DANCES OR GURDJIEFF MOVEMENTS

The Sacred Dances or Movements come from very ancient traditions, some practiced and transmitted orally in hidden monasteries. They came to be known at the beginning of the last century thanks to G.I. Gurdjieff who, after mastering the science of the Dances, and creating many new ones, started teaching them.

Not following any particular religion or philosophy, the Sacred Dances include the essence of all religions. The Sufi influence can be seen in some; many others are based on the Enneagram's mathematical structure, spiritual and esoteric meaning. Others again come from Christian, Buddhist, Islamic and Greek traditions. Each Dance is composed of a series of postures done to specific piano music, created to take the dancers to a place where they can no longer rely on mechanical procedure to perform the dance; but must instead stay present and open to a wisdom from within. The dancer then, may begin to experience their meaning.

To me, the Sacred Dances are the expression of some higher power, and they can give to the practitioner the experience of something sacred rising spontaneously from within. I experience their sacredness and meaning at different levels:



PHYSICAL:
- The body positions and sequences are very unusual: this is the first step towards sensing the body differently from the way I do habitually in daily life.
- Each position has different effects on the body's energy; increasing flow, leading to a sense of energetic balance and sometimes releasing energetic blocs.
- The practice of the Sacred Dances can result in improved:
         - body coordination; by working on the left and right brain hemispheres.
         - body balance; by developing the sense of 'grounding' and of accurate body awareness.
         - body posture; by creating relaxation through becoming aware of tensions.
         - Some people experience healing effects from practicing the Dances.

EMOTIONAL:
- I become more detached and even non-identified with my emotions during the practice and this carries over into my daily life.
- I learn to distinguish between real emotions and what Gurdjieff calls 'identifications'.
- I experience a deeper connection with my heart, that depends less on outside causes like the approval of others. I feel acceptance, surrender, letting go and trust rising naturally, as well as a profound gratitude to All.

MENTAL:
- I notice clearly when my attention is taken away by irrelevant thinking and this improves my ability to be present.
- I become aware of and understand my habitual behavior patterns.
- I realize how my mental state can effect my body and emotions.
- I connect more easily with higher mental states like watchfulness and intuition.

When I surrender to the postures of the Dances with their meaning; to the impact of the music with its vibration, and I stay present to all that is happening in that moment on the three levels described above, I experience the direct touch of the Sacred. Each time this comes with a new manifestation and a different flavor. From this space I can recognize a very gentle yet very strong power - something like a Master or a God - hidden in the Dances. These experiences lead me to see myself from a higher level of consciousness, and it is this that I aim to share through my work and the teaching of the Sacred Dances. These above are only words in which I describe my experience.

ONLY BY PRACTICING AND SENSING THE EFFECT OF THE SACRED DANCES CAN ONE HAVE THEDIRECT EXPERIENCE!

HISTORY OF DANCE

Dance and music

It is unlikely that any human society (at any rate until the invention of puritanism) has denied itself the excitement and pleasure of dancing. Like cave painting, the first purpose of dance is probably ritual - appeasing a nature spirit or accompanying a rite of passage. But losing oneself in rhythmic movement with other people is an easy form of intoxication. Pleasure can never have been far away. 

Rhythm, indispensable in dancing, is also a basic element of music. It is natural to beat out the rhythm of the dance with sticks. It is natural to accompany the movement of the dance with rhythmic chanting. Dance and music begin as partners in the service of ritual.

Dance as ritual

 In most ancient civilizations, dancing before the god is an important element in temple ritual. In Egypt the priests and priestesses, accompanied by harps and pipes, perform stately movements which mime significant events in the story of a god, or imitate cosmic patterns such as the rhythm of night and day. 

At Egyptian funerals, women dance to express the grief of the mourners.   

Sacred occasions in Greek shrines, such as thegames at Olympia from the 8th century BC, are inaugurated with dancing by the temple virgins. Thechoros is originally just such a dance, performed in a circle in honour of a god. In the 6th century it becomes the centrepiece ofGreek theatre.

In India the formalized hand movements of the priestesses inHindu templesare described in documents from as early as the 1st century AD. Each precise gesture is of subtle significance. A form of classical dance based upon them - known as Bharata Nhatyam - is still performed by highly skilled practitioners today. 

  

Dance as ecstasy

Any sufficiently uninhibited society knows that frantic dancing, in a mood heightened by pounding rhythm and flowing alcohol, will set the pulse racing and induce a mood of frenzied exhilaration. 

This is exemplified in the Dionysiac dances of ancient Greece. Villagers, after harvesting the grapes, celebrate the occasion with a drunken orgy in honour of Dionysus, god of wine (whose Roman name is Bacchus). Their stomping makes a favourite scene on Greek vases; and dancing women of this kind, whose frenzy even sweeps them into an act of murder, are immortalized in a tragedy, theBacchae, byEuripides. Short of this unfortunate extreme, all social dances promise the same desirable mood of release and excitement.   

Dance as entertainment, dance as display

Egyptian paintings, from as early as about 1400 BC, depict another eternal appeal of dancing. Scantily clad girls, accompanied by seated musicians, cavort enticingly on the walls of tombs. They will delight the male occupant during his residence in the next world. But dancing girls are for this world too. From princely banquet to back-street strip club, they require no explanation. 

Entertainment, and the closely related theme of display, underlies the story of public dance. In the courts of Europe spectacles of this kind lead eventually toballet.  

Ballet in France: 16th - 17th century AD

A favourite entertainment in Renaissance France and Italy involves ladies and gentlemen of the court being wheeled into the banqueting hall on scenic floats from which they descend to perform a dance. Such festivities are much encouraged byCatherine de Médicis after she marries into the French royal family.

In 1581 a significant step forward is taken by Catherine's director of court festivals, Baltazar de Beaujoyeulx. For a wedding celebration he produces theBalet Comique de la Reine, combining dance (which he describes as being just "geometric patterns of people dancing together") with the narrative interest of a comedy. It is the first dramatic ballet. 

This French and Italian love of dance continues in the next century. At the court of Savoy, in Turin, there is a strong tradition of lavish amateur ballets for any festive occasion in the mid-17th century. 

In France Louis XIII, son of Marie de Médicis, loves to show off his talents in this line - although, reports a contemporary, he "never performed anything but ridiculous characters". The king's typical roles include a wandering musician, a Dutch captain, a grotesque warrior, a farmer and a woman. His son Louis XIV enjoys similar pleasures, but his roles have a little more classical gravitas - a Bacchante, a Titan, a Muse and (presumably a favourite) Apollo dressed as the sun.

The dancers in court ballets are the courtiers themselves, and a large part of the pleasure comes from watching one's friends prance about in spectacular costumes. The English diarist John Evelyn sees Louis XIV dancing in Paris in 1651; he marvels not so much at the dancing as at so manySumptuously attired aristocrats.

But Louis XIV himself is genuinely interested in dancing, and in 1661 he decides that his colleagues are not up to scratch. He brings together the best Parisian dancing masters to form the Académie Royale de Danse, where his friends' skills may be honed. It is so successful that he follows it in 1669 with a similar Académie Royale de Musique.   

These two institutions are merged to form the Paris Opéra (still in existence today). From 1672 professional dancers are trained. The institution settles down into what is recognizably a ballet company. 

The first director, Pierre Beauchamp, choreographs many ballet sequences with music by Lully and others - and he devises his own system for recording the steps. (He is often credited with inventing the five classic positions for the feet, but more probably he is merely the first to record them.)  

A spectacular ballet by Lully and Beauchamp isLe Triomphe de l'Amour, first performed in 1681 with Beauchamp dancing Mars accompanied by ladies and gentlemen of the court. Four months later the same ballet is performed again, in a public theatre, with a significant innovation - professional female dancers.

The female ensemble is led by Mlle de Lafontaine, the world's first prima ballerina. She stars in many other ballets over the next twelve years (earning the title reine de la danse, "queen of the dance") before retiring into a convent. 

Lafontaine and her colleagues are constrained by the heavy dresses which convention forces them to wear on stage, but the men suffer less restriction (when dancing heroic roles their usual costume is akin to a Roman soldier's short tunic, coming half way down the thigh). 

Virtuoso male dancing rapidly becomes one of the great attractions of ballet. The first to demonstrate it is Jean Balon, who is with the Paris Opéra from 1691 to 1710. Famous for his lightness and agility, his name is possibly commemorated in the term "ballon" - still used today for the moment when a dancer can seem to pause in mid-air during a jump.  

ANCIENT ART AND RITUAL

ANCIENT ART AND RITUAL

CHAPTER I

ART AND RITUAL

THE title of this book may strike the reader as strange and even dissonant. What have art and ritual to do together? The ritualist is, to the modern mind, a man concerned perhaps unduly with fixed forms and ceremonies, with carrying out the rigidly pre-scribed ordinances of a church or sect. The artist, on the other hand, we think of as free in thought and untrammelled by convention in practice; his tendency is towards licence. Art and ritual, it is quite true, have diverged to-day; but the title of this book is chosen advisedly. Its object is to show that these two divergent developments have a common root, and that neither can be understood without the other. It is at the outset one

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and the same impulse that sends a man to church and to the theatre.

Such a statement may sound to-day paradoxical, even irreverent. But to the Greek of the sixth, fifth, and even fourth century B.C., it would have been a simple truism. We shall see this best by following an Athenian to his theatre, on the day of the great Spring Festival of Dionysos.

Passing through the entrance-gate to the theatre on the south side of the Acropolis, our Athenian citizen will find himself at once on holy ground. He is within a temenos or precinct, a place "cut off" from the common land and dedicated to a god. He will pass to the left (Fig. 2, p. 144) two temples standing near to each other, one of earlier, the other of later date, for a temple, once built, was so sacred that it would only be reluctantly destroyed. As he enters the actual theatre he will pay nothing for his seat; his attendance is an act of worship, and from the social point of view obligatory; the entrance fee is there-fore paid for him by. the State.

The theatre is open to all Athenian citizens, but the ordinary man will not venture to

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seat himself in the front row. In the front row, and that only, the seats have backs, and the central seat of this row is an arm-chair; the whole of the front row is permanently reserved, not for individual rich men who can afford to hire "boxes," but for certain State officials, and these officials are all priests. On each seat the name of the owner is inscribed; the central seat is "of the priest of Dionysos Eleuthereus," the god of the precinct. Near him is the seat "of the priest of Apollo the Laurel-Bearer," and again "of the priest of Asklepios," and "of the priest of Olympian Zeus," and so on round the whole front semicircle. It is as though at His Majesty's the front row of stalls was occupied by the whole bench of bishops, with the Archbishop of Canterbury enthroned in the central stall.

The theatre at Athens is not open night by night, nor even day by day. Dramatic performances take place only at certain high festivals of Dionysos in winter and spring. It is, again, as though the modern theatre was open only at the festivals of the Epiphany and of Easter. Our modern, at least our Protestant, custom is in direct contrast. We

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tend on great religious festivals rather to close than to open our theatres. Another point of contrast is in the time allotted to the performance. We give to the theatre our after-dinner hours, when work is done, or at best a couple of hours in the afternoon. The theatre is for us a recreation. The Greek theatre opened at sunrise, and the whole day was consecrated to high and strenuous religious attention. During the five or six days of the great Dionysia, the whole city was in a state of unwonted sanctity, under a taboo. To distrain a debtor was illegal; any personal assault, however trifling, was sacrilege.

Most impressive and convincing of all is the ceremony that took place on the eve of the performance. By torchlight, accompanied by a great procession, the image of the god Dionysos himself was brought to the theatre and placed in the orchestra. Moreover, he came not only in human but in animal form. Chosen young men of the Athenians in the flower of their youth--epheboi--escorted to the precinct a splendid bull. It was expressly ordained that the bull should be "worthy of the god "; he was,

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in fact, as we shall presently see, the primitive incarnation of the god. It is, again, as though in our modern theatre there stood, "sanctifying all things to our use and us to His service," the human figure of the Saviour, and beside him the Paschal Lamb.

But now we come to a strange thing. A god presides over the theatre, to go to the theatre is an act of worship to the god Dionysos, and yet, when the play begins, three i times out of four of Dionysos we hear nothing. We see, it may be, Agamemnon returning from Troy, Clytemnestra waiting to slay him, the vengeance of Orestes, the love of Phædra for Hippolytos, the hate of Medea and the slaying of her children: stories beautiful, tragic, morally instructive it may be, but scarcely, we feel, religious. The orthodox Greeks themselves sometimes complained that in the plays enacted before them there was "nothing to do with Dionysos."

If drama be at the outset divine, with its roots in ritual, why does it issue in an art profoundly solemn, tragic, yet purely human? The actors wear ritual vestments like those of the celebrants at the Eleusinian mysteries.

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[paragraph continues] Why, then, do we find them, not executing a religious service or even a drama of gods and goddesses, but rather impersonating mere Homeric heroes and heroines? Greek drama, which seemed at first to give us our clue, to show us a real link between ritual and art, breaks down, betrays us, it would seem, just at the crucial moment, and leaves us with our problem on our hands.

Had we only Greek ritual and art we might well despair. The Greeks are a people of such swift constructive imagination that they almost always obscure any problem of origins. So fair and magical are their cloud-capp’d towers that they distract our minds from the task of digging for foundations. There is scarcely a problem in the origins of Greek mythology and religion that has been solved within the domain of Greek thinking only. Ritual with them was, in the case of drama, so swiftly and completely transmuted into art that, had we had Greek material only to hand, we might never have marked the transition. Happily, however, we are not confined within the Greek paradise. Wider fields are open to us; our subject is not only Greek, but ancient art and ritual. We can turn at

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once to the Egyptians, a people slower-witted than the Greeks, and watch their sluggish but more instructive operations. To one who is studying the development of the human mind the average or even stupid child is often more illuminating than the abnormally brilliant. Greece is often too near to us, too advanced, too modern, to be for comparative purposes instructive.

Of all Egyptian, perhaps of all ancient deities, no god has lived so long or had so wide and deep an influence as Osiris. He stands as the prototype of the great class of resurrection-gods who die that they may live again. His sufferings, his death, and his resurrection were enacted year by year in a great mystery-play at Abydos. In that mystery-play was set forth, first, what the Greeks call his agon, his contest with his enemy Set; then his pathos, his suffering, or downfall and defeat, his wounding, his death, and his burial; finally, his resurrection and "recognition," his anagnorisis either as himself or as his only begotten son Horus. Now the meaning of this thrice-told tale we shall consider later; for the moment we are concerned

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only with the fact that it is set forth both in art and ritual.

At the festival of Osiris small images of the god were made of sand and vegetable earth, his cheek bones were painted green and his face yellow. The images were cast in a mould of pure gold, representing the god as a mummy. After sunset on the 24th day of the month Choiak, the effigy of Osiris was laid in a grave and the image of the previous year was removed. The intent of all this was made transparently clear by other rites. At the beginning of the festival there was a ceremony of ploughing and sowing. One end of the field was sown with barley, the other with spelt; another part with flax. While this was going on the chief priest recited the ritual of the "sowing of the fields." Into the "garden" of the god, which seems to have been a large pot, were put sand and barley, then fresh living water from the inundation of the Nile was poured out of a golden vase over the "garden" and the barley was allowed to grow up. It was the symbol of the resurrection of the god after his burial, "for the growth of the garden is the growth of the divine substance."

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The death and resurrection of the gods, and pari passu of the life and fruits of the earth, was thus set forth in ritual, but--and this is our immediate point--it was also set forth in definite, unmistakable art. In the great temple of Isis at Philæ there is a chamber dedicated to Osiris. Here is represented the dead Osiris. Out of his body spring ears of corn, and a priest waters the growing stalk from a pitcher. The inscription to the picture reads: This is the form of him whom one may not name, Osiris of the mysteries, who springs from the returning waters. It is but another presentation of the ritual of the month Choiak, in which effigies of the god made of earth and corn were buried. When these effigies were taken up it would be found that the corn had sprouted actually from the body of the god, and this sprouting of the grain would, as Dr. Frazer says, be "hailed as an omen, or rather as the cause of the growth of the crops." 1

Even more vividly is the resurrection set forth in the bas-reliefs that accompany the great Osiris inscription at Denderah. Here the god is represented at first as a mummy

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swathed and lying flat on his bier. Bit by bit he is seen raising himself up in a series of gymnastically impossible positions, till at last he rises from a bowl--perhaps his "garden"--all but erect, between the out-spread wings of Isis, while before him a male figure holds the crux ansata, the "cross with a handle," the Egyptian symbol of life. In ritual, the thing desired, i. e. the resurrection, is acted, in art it is represented.

No one will refuse to these bas-reliefs the title of art. In Egypt, then, we have clearly an instance--only one out of many--where art and ritual go hand in hand. Countless bas-reliefs that decorate Egyptian tombs and temples are but ritual practices translated into stone. This, as we shall later see, is an important step in our argument. Ancient art and ritual are not only closely connected, not only do they mutually explain and illustrate each other, but, as we shall presently find, they actually arise out of a common human impulse.

The god who died and rose again is not of course confined to Egypt; he is world-wide. When Ezekiel (viii. 14) "came to the gate of

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the Lord's house which was toward the north" he beheld there the "women weeping for Tammuz." This "abomination" the house of Judah had brought with them from Babylon. Tammuz is Dumuzi, "the true son," or more fully, Dumuzi-absu, "true son of the waters." He too, like Osiris, is a god of the life that springs from inundation and that dies down in the heat of the summer. In Milton's procession of false gods,

        "Thammuz came next behind,
Whose annual wound in Lebanon allured
The Syrian damsels to lament his fate
In amorous ditties all a summer's day."

Tammuz in Babylon was the young love of Ishtar. Each year he died and passed below the earth to the place of dust and death, "the land from which there is no returning, the house of darkness, where dust lies on door and bolt." And the goddess went after him, and while she was below, life ceased in the earth, no flower blossomed and no child of animal or man was born.

We know Tammuz, "the true son," best by one of his titles, Adonis, the Lord or King.

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[paragraph continues] The Rites of Adonis were celebrated at mid-summer. That is certain and memorable; for, just as the Athenian fleet was setting sail on its ill-omened voyage to Syracuse, the streets of Athens were thronged with funeral processions, everywhere was seen the image of the dead god, and the air was full of the lamentations of weeping women. Thucydides does not so much as mention the coincidence, but Plutarch 1 tells us those who took account of omens were full of concern for the fate of their countrymen. To start an expedition on the day of the funeral rites of Adonis, the Canaanitish "Lord," was no luckier than to set sail on a Friday, the death-day of the "Lord" of Christendom.

The rites of Tammuz and of Adonis, celebrated in the summer, were rites of death rather than of resurrection. The emphasis is on the fading and dying down of vegetation rather than on its upspringing. The reason of this is simple and will soon become manifest. For the moment we have only to note that while in Egypt the rites of Osiris are represented as much by art as by ritual, in Babylon and Palestine in the feasts of Tammuz

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and Adonis it is ritual rather than art that obtains.

We have now to pass to another enquiry. We have seen that art and ritual, not only in Greece but in Egypt and Palestine, are closely linked. So closely, indeed, are they linked that we even begin to suspect they may have a common origin. We have now to ask, what is it that links art and ritual so closely together, what have they in common? Do they start from the same impulse, and if so why do they, as they develop, fall so widely asunder?

It will clear the air if we consider for a moment what we mean by art, and also in somewhat greater detail what we mean by ritual.

Art, Plato 1 tells us in a famous passage of the Republic, is imitation; the artist imitates natural objects, which are themselves in his philosophy but copies of higher realities. All the artist can do is to make a copy of a copy, to hold up a mirror to Nature in which, as he turns it whither he will, "are reflected sun and heavens and earth and man," anything

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and everything. Never did a statement so false, so wrong-headed, contain so much suggestion of truth--truth which, by the help of analysing ritual, we may perhaps be able to disentangle. But first its falsehood must be grasped, and this is the more important as Plato's misconception in modified form lives on to-day. A painter not long ago thus defined his own art: "The art of painting is the art of imitating solid objects upon a flat surface by means of pigments." A sorry life-work! Few people to-day, perhaps, regard art as the close and realistic copy of Nature; photography has at least scotched, if not slain, that error; but many people still regard art as a sort of improvement on or an "idealization" of Nature. It is the part of the artist, they think, to take suggestions and materials from Nature, and from these to build up, as it were, a revised version. It is, perhaps, only by studying those rudimentary forms of art that are closely akin to ritual that we come to see how utterly wrong-headed is this conception.

Take the representations of Osiris that we have just described--the mummy rising bit by bit from his bier. Can any one maintain

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that art is here a copy or imitation of reality? However "realistic" the painting, it represents a thing imagined not actual. There never was any such person as Osiris, and if there had been, he would certainly never, once mummified, have risen from his tomb. There is no question of fact, and the copy of fact, in the matter. Moreover, had there been, why should anyone desire to make a copy of natural fact? The whole "imitation" theory, to which, and to the element of truth it contains, we shall later have occasion to return, errs, in fact, through supplying no adequate motive for a wide-spread human energy. It is probably this lack of motive that has led other theorizers to adopt the view that art is idealization. Man with pardonable optimism desires, it is thought, to improve on Nature.

Modern science, confronted with a problem like that of the rise of art, no longer casts about to conjecture how art might have arisen, she examines how it actually did arise. Abundant material has now been collected from among savage peoples of an art so primitive that we hesitate to call it art at

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all, and it is in these inchoate efforts that we are able to track the secret motive springs that move the artist now as then.

Among the Huichol Indians, 1 if the people fear a drought from the extreme heat of the sun, they take a clay disk, and on one side of it they paint the "face" of Father Sun, a circular space surrounded by rays of red and blue and yellow which are called his "arrows," for the Huichol sun, like Phœbus Apollo, has arrows for rays. On the reverse side they will paint the progress of the sun through the four quarters of the sky. The journey is symbolized by a large cross-like figure with a central circle for midday. Round the edge are beehive-shaped mounds; these represent the hills of earth. The red and yellow dots that surround the hills are cornfields. The crosses on the hills are signs of wealth and money. On some of the disks birds and scorpions are painted, and on one are curving lines which mean rain. These disks are deposited on the altar of the god-house and left, and then all is well. The intention might

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be to us obscure, but a Huichol Indian would read it thus: "Father Sun with his broad shield (or 'face') and his arrows rises in the east, bringing money and wealth to the Huichols. His heat and the light from his rays make the corn to grow, but he is asked not to interfere with the clouds that are gathering on the hills."

Now is this art or ritual? It is both and neither. We distinguish between a form of prayer and a work of art and count them in no danger of confusion; but the Huichol goes back to that earlier thing, apresentation. He utters, expresses his thought about the sun and his emotion about the sun and his relation to the sun, and if "prayer is the soul's sincere desire" he has painted a prayer. It is not a little curious that the same notion comes out in the old Greek word for "prayer," euchè. The Greek, when he wanted help in trouble from the "Saviours," the Dioscuri, carved a picture of them, and, if he was a sailor, added a ship. Underneath he inscribed the word euchè. It was not to begin with a "vow" paid, it was a presentation of his strong inner desire, it was a sculptured prayer.

Ritual then involves imitation; but does

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not arise out of it. It desires to recreate an emotion, not to reproduce an object. A rite is, indeed, we shall later see (p. 42), a sort of stereotyped action, not really practical, but yet not wholly cut loose from practice, a reminiscence or an anticipation of actual practical doing; it is fitly, though not quite correctly, called by the Greeks a dromenon, "a thing done."

At the bottom of art, as its motive power and its mainspring, lies, not the wish to copy Nature or even improve on her--the Huichol Indian does not vainly expend his energies on an effort so fruitless--but rather an impulse shared by art with ritual, the desire, that is, to utter, to give out a strongly felt emotion or desire by representing, by making or doing or enriching the object or act desired. The common source of the art and ritual of Osiris is the intense, world-wide desire that the life of Nature which seemed dead should live again. This common emotional factor it is that makes art and ritual in their beginnings well-nigh indistinguishable. Both, to begin with, copy an act, but not at first for the sake of the copy. Only when the emotion dies down and is

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forgotten does the copy become an end in itself, a mere mimicry.

It is this downward path, this sinking of making to mimicry, that makes us now-a-days think of ritual as a dull and formal thing. Because a rite has ceased to be believed in, it does not in the least follow that it will cease to be done. We have to reckon with all the huge forces of habit. The motor nerves, once set in one direction, given the slightest impulse tend always to repeat the same reaction. We mimic not only others but ourselves mechanically, even after all emotion proper to the act is dead; and then because mimicry has a certain ingenious charm, it becomes an end in itself for ritual, even for art.

It is not easy, as we saw, to classify the Huichol prayer-disks. As prayers they are ritual, as surfaces decorated they are specimens of primitive art. In the next chapter we shall have to consider a kind of ceremony very instructive for our point, but again not very easy to classify--the pantomimic dances which are, almost all over the world, so striking a feature in savage social and religious life, Are they to be classed as ritual or art?

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These pantomime dances lie, indeed, at the very heart and root of our whole subject, and it is of the first importance that before going further in our analysis of art and ritual, we should have some familiarity with their general character and gist, the more so as they are a class of ceremonies now practically extinct. We shall find in these dances the meeting-point between art and ritual, or rather we shall find in them the rude, inchoate material out of which both ritual and art, at least in one of its forms, developed. Moreover, we shall find in pantomimic dancing a ritual bridge, as it were, between actual life and those representations of life which we call art.

In our next chapter, therefore, we shall study the ritual dance in general, and try to understand its psychological origin; in the following chapter (III) we shall take a particular dance of special importance, the Spring Dance as practised among various primitive peoples. We shall then be prepared to approach the study of the Spring Dance among the Greeks, which developed into their drama, and thereby to, we hope, throw light on the relation between ritual and art.

Ancient Art and Ritual

by Jane Harrison (1913.)