Dalcroze Eurythmics: Music and Movement

Dalcroze Eurythmics: Music and Movement

Eurythmics (Fr. Rythmique; German Rythmik), a method for music and movement, created by the Suisse musician and composer Émile Jacques-Dalcroze (1865-1950), have for more than hundred years had a major influence on music education. With a wide spectrum of different exercises, also including improvisation, Eurhythmics can be considered as a creative Way of learning and experiencing music through bodily movements.
Émile Jaques-Dalcroze belonged to an important historical period of development and creativity, not at least in the fields of spirituality and arts. Around the years of the Millennium 1900 and forwards, we find among others the successors of Helena Blavatsky, esoteric teachers as Rudolf Steiner, George Gurdjieff, Alice A. Bailey and Helena Roerich, artists as Nicholas Roerich and Hilma af Klint, the dancers Isadora Duncan, Sergej Diaghilev and Mary Wigman. In the years before the first world war, in the new built German theatre of Hellerau, and in collaboration with the stage designer Adolphe Appia, Jaques-Dalcroze created performances which attracted not only musicians but also dancers and others from many parts of the world. 1915 he created Institut Jaques-Dalcroze in Geneva which is still today often seen as the head institute for other Dalcroze schools around the world.