Eurythmy as Visible Singing

Acknowledgements

Two eurythmists in particular have helped with many valuable suggestions regarding this translation, for which I am deeply indebted. Dorothea Mier lent me the translation notes she kept from study groups held throughout the years she has spent in training eurythmists. Her colleague, Barbara Schneider-Serio, provided me with copious and detailed suggestions both before and after the editing stage. She is responsible for felicitous solutions to several difficult translation problems, and the final result should be termed a collaboration. Both of these artists helped me to keep as close as possible to Steiner's expressions (sometimes even at the expense of ‘smooth’ English) and to beware of making slight ‘interpretations’. The reader's access to Steiner's meaning should be as direct as possible. [Translator's additions are included between square brackets.] Margaret Miles and Maren Weissenborn also spent time checking the translation, and they made many valuable suggestions at several stages of the work. Suggestions from some of my own students have been included. Katherine Stewart's editing and exemplary professional attitude (she is an American eurythmist), I take to be another positive sign for international relations in the world of eurythmy as we approach the millennium. I am indebted to her for the interest and support she unstintingly gave. Dr David Rycroft kindly edited the Introduction and Endnotes at an earlier stage. Terry Boardman, a eurythmist who has lived in Japan, helped with Appendices 4, 5 and 8, and checked the text. Naturally I am responsible for certain choices in this translation (such as keeping to English as spoken in England), and I am responsible for all the defects of the final version. I am grateful to all those people who helped me to realize how important it is today to know what we are doing. I might also be allowed to express here my gratitude to all the performers, eurythmy students, and pupils of the Waldorf Schools for whom I have played, and from whom I have learned. Thank you, all of you.

Written on 20.9.93, the eightieth anniversary of the laying of the foundation stone of the First Goetheanum, Dornach, Switzerland.

Alan Stott, Stourbridge