What is Eurythmy?
Eurythmy is an expressive movement art originated by Rudolf Steiner in conjunction with his wife, Marie Steiner-von Sivers, in the early 20th century. Often called “visible music” or “visible speech,” eurythmy aims to bring the artists’ expressive movement and both the performers’ and audience’s feeling experience into harmony with a piece’s content. The practice assigns specific gestures to each phonetic sound of language and to musical tones, intervals, and rhythms. Primarily a performance art, it is also used in education, especially in Waldorf schools, and as part of anthroposophic medicine for claimed therapeutic purposes.
Unlike improvised or emotionally expressive dance, eurythmy operates on the premise that sounds and tones possess inherent formative qualities that can be made visible through precise, lawful movements. In speech eurythmy, every sound of human language has a defined gesture—they are perceived within the sounds and tones themselves and then faithfully rendered through the body; the eurythmist is not the author but the instrument, much as a pianist does not invent the notes but plays what the composer has written. The art form draws heavily on Steiner’s anthroposophical worldview, which describes supersensible spiritual realities underlying physical phenomena.
Origins & Lineage
Eurythmy was conceived in 1911 when a widow brought her young daughter, Lory Smits, who was interested in movement and dance, to Rudolf Steiner. Steiner 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. In the autumn 1912, Rudolf Steiner presented the first eurythmy performance. In 1912, the mother of Lory Maier-Smits asked Rudolf Steiner whether there was a form of movement art that could serve as an expression of spiritual science; Steiner responded with the first eurythmy lesson, given to Lory Maier-Smits in September 1912 in Bottmingen, near Basel, Switzerland.
Marie Steiner-von Sivers, Steiner’s wife, who was a trained actress and speech artist, was given responsibility for training and directing the first eurythmy ensemble. Beginning in 1912, Steiner began to incorporate the new art of movement into his dramas performed at the Anthroposophical Society’s summer gatherings. 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. This first eurythmy ensemble went on tour in 1919, performing across Switzerland, the Netherlands and Germany. Rudolf Steiner gave two seminal courses that formed the foundations of speech and tone eurythmy in 1915 and 1924; the debut of eurythmy as a stage art in Dornach, Switzerland also came in 1915. 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 and Eurythmy as Visible Singing. The first professional eurythmy training was begun in 1923 by Alice Fels in Stuttgart, Germany.
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.
How It’s Practiced
Most eurythmy today is performed to classical (concert) music or texts such as poetry or stories. In speech eurythmy, practitioners learn gestures for vowels and consonants. Vowels are understood as soul expressions—expansive, emotive movements—while consonants create form and definition. 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.
Practitioners typically wear flowing, colored silk garments that enhance the visibility of the movements. Rods or balls are sometimes used in exercises to develop precision in movement, to expand the experience of space, develop precise balance, and to objectify the movement experience; the rods are usually approximately the length of an arm; both are generally made of copper, a material receptive to warmth. 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.
Eurythmy training is rigorous and typically spans four years. By the end of the first year, students would have learned all the vowels and all the consonants, and begun to move their first poems with classmates; they would also learn the gestures for the tones of the musical scales and be able to do simple pieces; they would learn gestures for musical intervals and could show any scale in movement. Graduates of the four-year full-time training go on to become teachers in Waldorf schools, therapeutic eurythmy practitioners, and stage artists.
Eurythmy Today
Eurythmy is encountered in several contexts in contemporary spiritual and educational communities. Eurythmy plays a significant role in Waldorf schools, where it is integrated into the curriculum from kindergarten through high school; Waldorf schools incorporate eurythmy into their daily routines to enhance students’ learning experiences. Three professional applications were developed: therapeutic eurythmy, pedagogical eurythmy, and eurythmy in the workplace, giving access to the potency of eurythmy as a healing modality, as a support for the developing child, and as a tool for strengthening group work.
Therapeutic eurythmy, also known as “curative eurythmy,” is used to treat various physical and psychological conditions; therapeutic eurythmy can help with conditions like anxiety, depression, and ADHD. However, eurythmy is a component of anthroposophic medicine, a system of alternative medicine which has been criticised as unscientific, pseudoscientific and as “pure quackery”.
There are now training centers in Europe, North America, and other regions offering multi-year professional diplomas. Successful completion of the four-year Vocational Training in Eurythmy leads to a Diploma in Eurythmy, accredited by the “Section for the Performing Arts of the School of Spiritual Science” at the Goetheanum, Dornach, Switzerland. Online platforms have also emerged in recent years, offering introductory recorded lessons and live webinars for personal practice, making the form more accessible to curious seekers who cannot attend in-person training.
Common Misconceptions
Eurythmy is often confused with expressive dance, interpretive movement, or somatic therapy, but it operates on fundamentally different principles. It is not improvisational; each gesture corresponds to a specific sound or tone according to a codified system developed by Steiner. A eurythmy performance is evaluated on the basis of accuracy, clarity, and the degree to which the performer makes the inherent qualities of the sound visible—these are different criteria from dance, which is evaluated on originality, emotional power, and aesthetic innovation, and they produce different kinds of artistic experience.
While Steiner described eurythmy as connected to spiritual realities, critics have noted that the aim is to show to what extent eurythmy is a genuinely anthroposophical theory of body and movement and to what extent it is a child of the then flourishing body culture (Körperkultur) movement; Rudolf Steiner got the idea to develop an original art of movement somewhat accidentally. Its spiritual claims are not empirically verifiable and rest entirely within anthroposophical cosmology.
Eurythmy is also not a physical fitness practice or a secular movement discipline. It requires commitment to the anthroposophical framework and is deeply intertwined with Steiner’s esoteric teachings about etheric and astral bodies, planetary influences, and the evolution of consciousness. Seekers from outside this framework may find eurythmy aesthetically compelling but philosophically opaque.
How to Begin
For those curious about eurythmy, the most direct path is observation. Many Waldorf schools offer public performances; attending one provides a sense of the art’s visual language and atmosphere. Several introductory books exist, including Eurythmy as Visible Speech and Eurythmy as Visible Singing by Rudolf Steiner, though these are dense theoretical texts aimed at practitioners rather than general readers.
Online resources now offer accessible entry points: websites like eurythmyonline.com provide recorded lessons in basic exercises, vowel and consonant gestures, and therapeutic movements. For hands-on learning, look for weekend workshops or drop-in classes offered by Waldorf schools or anthroposophical centers. Full training programs—typically four years—are available at dedicated eurythmy schools in Europe (notably Dornach, Switzerland and Forest Row, UK), North America (Spring Valley, New York; Fair Oaks, California), and elsewhere. Prospective students should be prepared for a physically and philosophically demanding curriculum rooted in anthroposophical study.