An Exploration in Eurythmy, Dance and Theatre
Directed
by Philip Beaven
Violin music composed by Nicholas Korth
Songs and instrumental music by Paul Cleaver
Text by Paul Matthews and members of the company
Inspired by the "Snow Goose" by Paul Gallico, this was the story of how a man, estranged from society for his ugly misshapen body, comes to sacrifice himself in a deed of love and courage. The metaphor of the of the contrasting love between hero and heroine was further developed through the dance and eurythmy. This production arose out of an exciting collaboration between eurythmists, modern dancers, actors, a poet, a mask maker and musicians. The music, especially composed for this show, was written for violin by Nicholas Korth and for a variety of folk instruments and voice by Paul Cleaver. The show was directed and choreographed by Philip Beaven.
"Storm's Child" with childrens shows "The Sea Dragon" and "Words on the Wing" toured from 8th September 1995 to 29th November 1996 visiting 14 countries and performing to over 39,000 adults and children. There were a total of 269 shows.
From the programme:
Imagination and Experimentation
A Musicians Journey Into Collaboration
Imagination and Experimentation
Imagination is that in us which strives to render phenomena intelligible. It plays one percept off against another in an effort to make unified sense of whatever confronts it. It is the faculty that intuits relationships. This intuiting can be seen as a reading of phenomena.
Certain sorts of performance encourage, even demand this activity, if one is to make sense of what one sees. The phenomena themselves do not speak directly, we have to read behind/through them. Thereby adding to what we see from our own imagination. It can be seen as audience participation. Such a performance is not usually the sort that one can sit back and bathe in. At a certain level one can do this with for instance, classical music, or sometimes opera, even theatre if it relies heavily on melodrama. Whereas contemporary music, modern dance etc very often demands that we actively "read" what we see or hear. This sort of performance, if it is accessible to our imagination, can leave us with a strong sense of discovery, of having achieved something. Of course if it doesn*t work we experience only frustration, annoyance and alienation, feeling that the performers are party to some secret that they are not sharing with the audience. Here a director who is constantly aware that the performance must speak to the audience is essential. One aspect of the director*s job is as representative of the audience.
This imaginative reading requires an attitude of inquisitiveness. The more this inquisitiveness is filled with wonder, with a positive open-mindedness, the more the audience will be able to "read" from the performance. These are life skills that open the door to new experiences and ultimately to the condition of the child in the adult.
The foundation for the development of "Storm's Child" was the practise of just these skills and the quality of performance that we strove to create was one that required the activity of the imagination to perceive it. The practise of improvisation, a skill that requires focus, positivity, equanimity and open-mindedness, was the tool that we used to develop all aspects of the show - the eurythmy, dance, music and theatre. Just as we sought the "child in the adult" in our audiences, so we sought for the same quality in ourselves as performers. How do we "play" through the skills we have as performers, in whatever discipline? How do we find access to our creative sources? Living with these questions the performance process of "Storm's Child" grew and developed. Then as we began to repeat what we had created it became possible to perceive deeper themes that could be read from what we had created. These had arisen as a part of the process, spontaneously, rather than thought out and consciously placed there.
For instance it was possible to "read" in the mask that hung on the curtain at the beginning, and was the point of focus out of which the story unfolded and into which it went at the end, the inhabiting, the ensouling of the fixed form of the body by the spirit and soul and its release from the body at the end of its life (the mask remains, a discarded husk, on the floor at the end).
Or in the eurythmy and dance sequences, where the dialogue between these two apparently disparate arts of movement was like a reflection of the play between the characters of the young girl Freya and the crippled man Thomas. (That is not to say that either of the arts was symbolically represented by, for instance, the cripple!) Working with creating a performance in this way the results are often full of surprises sometimes defying logic and reason. These one becomes conscious of only after they are created. If we had tried to put them in consciously they would probably have appeared contrived and thought out.
How do we measure the success of such an endeavour? From our beginning, playing with eurythmy and dance, we had no idea where it would lead us. Now having performed "Storm's Child" along with the childrens* performances over eighty times each we need to review what has, or has not, been achieved by this project.
Certainly we have experienced a very positive response from a large portion of the audiences, more than any other programme that we have done so far. The one enduring comment has been the gratitude from people who, acquainted with eurythmy, had not really been moved before in such a wholesale way by a performance with eurythmy in it. But there were also those, one or two at every performance, whom we could not reach, who deemed our experiment a failure.
But from me, as the director/facilitator, and from all the performers there is an enduring gratitude to have been a part of such an event. "Storm's Child" had a "life" of its own. All the performers spoke of this. It was like opening a door each time it was performed, and seemed to have a spiritual dimension beyond the performers and technicians who made it possible. Where will it go to now?
The life of performance demands risk taking. Risks are inherently dangerous, we tread an unknown path. One mistake and we are in danger of losing our audience -our bread and butter! But I believe that without risks, without experimentation all art dies. The future of performance art depends on this public risk taking, eurythmy audiences are longing for it. Longing for us to take intelligent risks that allow them to participate in the "life" of our creations.
© Philip Beaven - Director
A Musicians Journey Into Collaboration
Coming to the end of our North American tour, it is quite hard now to look back and try to remember what I saw when I came to Forest Row for the first time to rehearse with the EET. The picture that comes to mind is of strange arm-waving and of people moving around each other in a way that completely bemused me. Of course, at this stage of rehearsal the music was totally unknown and nobody knew what exactly we were trying to create. Having worked with creatively free groups before, I decided that it could be a while before I could make any sense of what I was seeing.
Gradually, as I watched the movements being formed, I started trying to make creative sense of the rules that eurythmy functions by. A set of gestures for each tone and interval could seem a bit like a musical version of semaphore instead of an expressive art form. A working relationship developed between myself as musician and the eurythmists as we discussed musical phrasing and structure and as our mutual understanding of what we each were doing deepened.
As a musician, I find a great deal of inspiration from other artists and so in being committed to collaboration in creating a piece, I need to develop a two-way relationship between my interpretation of the music and the people who move to it. There were times when I was quite mystified by eurythmists seeming to relate to the music in the space around them rather than the music that we were in the process of creating together. (In this sense I see the playing of music that is already composed as a creative process in the moment that the notes are played.) Although it is hard to define where-in the difference between these two things lies, for me it was made clearer by the different relationship that developed between myself and Veronica, the dancer in the project. This was altogether more straight forward, undoubtedly partly because it is easier to relate to one other person than a whole group of people who are firstly trying to relate to each other. However, aside from this, I felt an easy recognition of us both being engaged in a creative and expressive task that starts at point A and needs to find a way to get to point B. There is something concrete in this, that I had difficulty in finding in my relationship with the eurythmists, and sometimes I wondered if essentially the essence of eurythmy could be destroyed by a very concrete relationship, as easily as a bubble that lands on a surface.
I still have not answered that question for myself, but during the course of performing "Storm's Child" many times I did sometimes have the sensation of moving the space with the music as the eurythmists move it with their gestures and forms. Perhaps that is the point at which the relationship truly becomes creative, but I have yet to find how to bring that into rehearsal and the initial creative process. I think it requires the development of a common language in which to talk about this, as musicians can easily talk about notes, rhythms, dynamics, sound and emotion but in a sense this is not what eurythmy works with in the end. It may essentially be working with something that is intangible, but so does every art form and they all have to use tangible means to do so.
"Jamming" is a word musicians use when they hit a groove in playing together. What words would a eurythmist use to describe the feeling of being really with the music irrespective of the perfection of the eurythmy?
© Rachel Pantin - Violinist
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