История ритмики Далькроза в России

Материал из HEPTACHOR.

HISTORY OF DALCROZE'S EURHYTHMICS IN RUSSIA

Lena Romanov

Teacher of Eurhythmics at the Gnessins Music College for Gifted Children

When the courses of eurhythmic gymnastics were open in Moscow and Saint Petersburg in the early 1910s, Emile Jaques-Dalcroze wrote to his Russian pupils: “We are well aware of the fact that among all the Dalcroze eurhythmic courses established outside Hellerau, never was there more enthusiasm and deeper understanding of the inside matter of the eurhythmic gymnastic than in your courses. This is why we are looking upon you and the new elements that you bring into eurhythmic education with great anticipation.” It is with special respect and feeling of gratitude that we, the Moscow teachers of eurhythmics, mention the name of Nina Aleksandrova. It was Aleksandrova – that modest and very gifted Russian student with delicate, music-like movements – who came from Hellerau to Moscow to demonstrate the eurhythmic gymnastics. Practically all of her fifty demonstrations were to have a smashing success. She began to teach eurhythmics in the worker’s clubs and private music schools. She also opened the first private training courses and became the first professor of eurhythmics, teaching her future assistants.

Soon Sergei Volkonsky established the eurhythmic gymnastic courses in Saint Petersburg. Count Volkonsky, a pupil of Dalcroze and a passionate herald of his doctrine, was a remarkable art critic and one of the most gifted figures of early twentieth-century Russian culture.

Another Dalcroze student, Vera Alvang-Greener, pioneered therapeutic eurhythmics in Russia. By the twenties, she created, together with the psychiatry professor Gilyarovsky, a system of medical eurhythmics for the mentally retarded. She also wrote a valuable textbook on logopaedic eurhythmics for people with speech problems like stuttering.

But Nina Aleksandrova remains the central figure in spreading the eurhythmic gymnastics and making it popular in Russia. In 1912 Jaques Dalcroze came to Moscow and found there a hearty reception for which he was grateful to his pupil, who managed to pave the way for it so well in Moscow. But alongside recognition, he was met with severe criticism from the theatre director, Stanislavsky. The latter dismissed free improvisation of the eurhythmic etudes by Dalcroze pupils as mere show-off and empty affectation.

Curious as it may be, when the Bolsheviks came to power, the interest for eurhythmics did not fade away: on the contrary, new horizons for its development were opened. It seems that the eurhythmic lessons did not contradict either communist theory or so-called proletarian culture and the principle of collectivism. After a series of demonstration lessons for Comrade Lunacharsky, the minister of culture in the Bolshevik government, Aleksandrova obtained a splendid mansion in the old part of Moscow for her school. There the main subjects such as eurhythmics, solfeggio, piano, harmony as well as plastics, pedagogic and psychology were taught by former Hellerau students and also by eurhythmists who graduated from the Moscow Dalcroze Courses of Music and Rhythm. Among them were Vera Greener, whom I have already mentioned, and Helen Konorova - a very talented eurhythmist who taught in the world-famous Central Moscow Music School at the Moscow Conservatory. She was the author of methodical textbooks on eurhythmics for children that became classic in Russia and are of great value today. She has also written textbooks on eurhythmics in theater.

The creation of the Institute of Rhythm was of utmost importance. It was due to this institute that Moscow had eurhythmics teachers in schools, kindergartens and higher institutions of musical education, in ballet and drama schools.

Thus a system of musical-eurhythmical education began forming in Moscow in the twenties. However, it could exist within the framework of the communist regime only by constantly proving its political necessity for “the communist cause of creating a new type of a man”. And strange as it may seem, it was these severe conditions of existence in the communist surroundings that drove eurhythmists to search for non-traditional ways of applying the Dalcroze eurhythmics in very different spheres. In those years the interest in eurhythmics was immense. Besides educational and research work conducted by Aleksandrova`s Institute, the Institute also organized amateur groups, as had also once happened in Hellerau. After yet another demonstration lesson at the Institute, the Red Army recruits asked to attend eurhythmic classes. Actually, there was not a field of art or science concerned with the issues of rhythm; this was left out by eurhythmists. The ever energetic Aleksandrova wrote an article entitled “The Rhythm and Labour Processes” aimed directly at a factory workshop. It was then that the mutual and intensive work of eurhythmists and psychiatrists began. Vera Greener started lessons of eurythmic gymnastics in a psychiatric clinic in Moscow.

All this titanic activity of eurhythmists, of Alexandrova`s personal passion and of a true interest shown towards eurhythmics by simple folk may seem unbelievable and kind of absurd in a hungry, cold and poverty-stricken Moscow in the age of so-called “military communism”. It was to this very Moscow that Count Volkonsky came to in 1918 after his courses in Petrograd were shut. It sounds incredible that this refined aristocrat made himself devoted in those horrible times: he taught scenic oration and plastics at theatre studios and the Moscow Drama Theatre, and later on he joined Aleksandrova`s Institute. He was captured by the fantastic atmosphere of Moscow`s theatrical rage and he was fascinated by his audience – ignorant and illiterate youth who are enchanted by theatre. Being in love with his work, Count Volkonsky was patient and understanding, but he could not tolerate evil and the constant lies that surrounded him. In 1921 he emigrated. I should also add that following the closure of Count Volkonsky`s courses in Peterburg in 1920, the Institute of Rhythmic Education was founded, and Nina Romanov – a pupil of Dalcroze – taught there. Her pupil, Vera Yanovskaya, created a method of eurhythmic education for choreography classes for ballet dancers. Her textbooks on choreographic eurhythmics (choreorhythmics) remain until now the only existing textbooks of this kind and are widely used by her followers. For a long time she taught at the Choreographic School of the Bolshoi Theater in Moscow and also at the school of the world-famous Moiseyev Folk Dance Ensemble. The fate of Aleksandrova`s Institute in Moscow was rather sad. After nearly 80 specialists – teachers of eurhythmics for educational, drama and medical institutions of the state – had graduated from the Institute, it was shut down on the order of the state authorities in 1924. Thus a severe blow was given to Dalcroze eurhythmics in Russia. However, Aleksandrova and her disciples did not give themselves up to despair. They established the Moscow Association of Eurhythmists – the MAR. Its members were Dalcroze eurhythmists; its aim was propagation of eurhythmic education; its task was research work in the sphere of rhythm and its practical application in different fields of art and life. The MAR was planned as the center for rhythmics and consisted of the following sections: pre-school, formal education school, special school, musical, theater and medical institutions and amateur. The eurhythmists prepared regular reports, gave demonstrations of the method, wrote books and special textbooks, collected archive materials – all of which promoted the stable activity of the eurhythmic teachers, encouraged interest towards eurhythmics and upheld its popularity.

However, there wasn’t a field of art or culture under communism that was allowed to exist independent of ideological pressure and political surveillance. In the mid-twenties, different eurhythmic, drama and ballet studios were shut down by the dozen until all of them seized to exist. Just before the Second World War, the MAR was closed. The «Iron Curtain» was drawn down. For decades it barred our people from foreign culture. All this, of course, had a negative impact on the system of music and rhythm education. During the twenties, Aleksandrova still had an opportunity to visit Dalcroze in Geneva and Austria that enabled her to give lectures in Moscow on the latest foreign systems of movement and on Swedish, German and French gymnastics. At that time she was still in good contact with the roots of eurhythmics – with Hellerau. Now all of this became simply impossible.

The cultural isolation of Russia, the communist ideology, the atmosphere of total purges, suppressed the search and blocked the possibility of any alternative systems in education. Soon eurhythmics itself became a victim of the purges.

Aleksandrova had to defend the cause of her life in articles and constant arguments. It became harder to study eurhythmics even for your own self. Its popularity subsequently declined. A real problem with training teachers of eurhythmics occurred after the shutting down of the Institute of the Rhythmic Education in 1923 and the three-year Courses in 1933. From then on eurhythmics was taught only in several institutions, including the Moscow Conservatory, where Professor Aleksandrova created a special eurythmics for conductors. According to her, it was very difficult because the conductors required special, expedient psycho-phisiastic training that could prepare a young conductor for a successful job. Such outstanding conductors as Boris Hicin, Constantin Ivanov, Kirill Kondrashin, Eugene Svetlanov and Gennadi Rozhdestvenski were all Aleksandrova’s pupils. Besides the Conservatory, at that time eurhythmics was taught also at the Central Moscow Music School by Helen Konorova, at the Gnessin Music School and at the Ballet School of the Bolshoi Theater by Vera Yanovskaya.

Aleksandrova, Romanova and Yanovskaya are all gone today. In 1992 Vera Greener died. But it is to these wonderful people that we are grateful today for the fact that the Dalcroze eurhythmics is alive and well regardless of its difficult fate in Russia. What is the situation with eurhythmics in today’s Russia? One cannot call it tragic, but neither can we call it optimistic. The popularity that eurhythmics once enjoyed is certainly gone and, who knows, maybe forever. The Russian eurhythmists do not have their own center as they had at the time of the Moscow Association of Eurhythmists in the twenties and thirties. This makes personal contact among them quite difficult.