Eurythmy first at Hawthorn

Having bid farewell to Peter and Sebastien about to set off to the Devon coast for a weekend of camping, Clare and I drove to Hawthorn Steiner school to prepare the meals for the ten strong team of musicians and eurythmists who'd come to perform twice today - once before lunch for children, and the second full length evening performance which Clare has spent a lot of her time organising and publicising recently. The eurythmists are students at the West Midlands Eurythmy Association school in Stourbridge, doing their end of year performance tour with their teacher. They'd left home at seven this morning to arrive in time to set up the performance area in the school's main hall, and rehearse themselves into the space.

For the children, they did a folk tale called 'Jack and the North Wind'. It was visually stunning, and such a new experience for them, that most were held spellbound for the half an hour it lasted. I took over a hundred photos with my Lumix LX5, and was thrilled at its responsiveness, given I had it on automatic settings and simply pressed the button at every eye-catching moment possible. It was exciting to get such good results indoors, with so much movement going on.

Thirty people attended the evening performance, which was a many as the hall could contain without encroaching on the stage area. There was a repeat of 'Jack' in the second half, and in the first half some performance pieces with poetry and with music, plus an extraordinary dramatic rendering of an edited passage from Tolkein's 'The Hobbit' in which Bilbo and Gollum set each other riddles.

For the evening performance the lighting wasn't as kind to the camera, and the bulb popped in one of just two stage floodlights I'd collected from Crane's music shop in town early in the day. However, I set up the little Sony W690 on a tripod on a step ladder in a corner, and let it run throughout the evening, and to my surprise the results were very good indeed, except that it switched itself off after recording video continuously for half and hour - a massive 2 gigabyte file! The hour and ten minute performance drained the battery completely, but nevertheless, delivered the goods. Editing may take some time.

What a day. I can't remember when last I saw a full Eurythmy performance - was it Clare's graduation? It's such a powerful disciplined medium of expression. I must make an effort to find time to attend more eurythmy performances, as it's so uplifting and inspiring an art form, visually, dramatically, spiritually.