If sound could be seen
Picture yourself on an awesome sound trip, one of those moments when your iPod shuffles your tunes exactly the way you want it. Even better, imagine sound-tripping with live music like that from a freshly-tuned piano or a guitar so carefully plucked you can hear the sound of the musician’s fingertips gently rubbing against the strings at every chord shift.
Ever notice how engaging in a truly aesthetic experience such as listening to music or a poem being recited heightens your senses and enhances consciousness to the point where time seems to stop and you find yourself in what appears to be an eternal present? I remember my art teacher perfectly describing such a moment as the exact opposite of visiting the dentist to have your tooth pulled out wherein you want to have an anesthetic experience instead of one where you can sense everything in what seems like forever.
Now visualize being able to actually see what you’re listening to, with every tone and spoken word coming alive and moving a carefully choreographed number right in front of you — just imagine even for a second what that would be like. It seems almost inconceivable but thanks to the movement art called eurythmy, what was previously only heard can now be seen as well. Unlike contemporary dance, the aim of this art form is not to interpret emotions suggested by what is heard or portray the personal feelings by the choreographer as a response to the music. Rather, the eurythmists themselves become music, moving their very inner qualities such as melody, harmony and rhythm, usually with a different eurythmist expressing each instrument. Likewise in eurythmy with speech, the aim is not the mere representation of letters as they appear in written language — so it doesn’t have anything to do with how one would groove to the retro hit YMCA — instead one gestures according to the inner quality of a letter. For instance, an “a” or “ah” sound is moved by raising and opening the arms in a “V” position in accordance with the open quality of that sound. Beyond the stage, eurythmy is known to have a healing aspect to it, whether a person is actually participating in the activity or merely watching it being performed. In curative education, it is done with children with learning disabilities.
Initially it may appear to be a very new form of art, but this “art of the soul” also known as “visible singing” or “visible speech,” founded in 1912 by Austrian philosopher Rudolf Steiner, actually reaches its centennial this year. Eurythmy was introduced to the Philippine public in 2002 by the Sekem Ensemble which was then centered in Switzerland but now based in Egypt, with performances in ABS-CBN’s Studio One (today’s Dolphy Theater). This October, The Arte Nova Eurythmy Ensemble, a youth group from Switzerland with director Tanja Baumgartner, who has been giving basic eurythmy classes in Manila since 2009, will be on tour in the Philippines to perform their repertoire “Transitions” to audiences in Manila, Baguio, Cotabato and Davao. This is the group’s first appearance in Asia following their recent European debut.
If music or speech could be made visible, what would it be like? * * *
Catch Arte Nova live at the Marie Eugenie Theater, Assumption College in Makati on Oct. 6, Makilala and Kidapawan in Cotabato on Oct. 9 and 10, Davao Convention Center in Davao City on Oct. 12, and at Saint Louis University’s Center for Culture and the Arts in Baguio on Oct. 16. For tickets and inquiries, contact 0917-8574960 (Manila), 0915-1821612 (Baguio), 0908-1535326 (Davao) or look for “Transitions by the Arte Nova Eurythmy Youth Ensemble” on Facebook.
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True art does not reproduce the visible; rather, it makes visible. — Paul Klee
