Unity in Movement: Reflections from the 2025 Youth Eurythmy Festival in San Francisco

Unity in Movement: Reflections from the 2025 Youth Eurythmy Festival in San Francisco

by | Feb 26, 2025 | Curriculum, Eurythmy, Festivals, Field Trips, High School, Student Work

By Michaela Bergmann | Eurythmy Teacher, Middle and High School

Eight WSP students joined me in our WSP van to make the 45-mile trip to the four-day Youth Eurythmy Festival in San Francisco earlier this month.

When we arrived, we were greeted by High School eurythmy troops from four other Waldorf High Schools from San Francisco, Portland, New York, and San Diego. We knew that we would be doing eurythmy together and had also prepared some pieces to share. We also knew that the whole group would have the opportunity to move together.

Each morning, we met and began the day with a morning verse and Eurythmy Verse from Steiner. We then divided all the participants into two groups of 25 each. One group worked with Mrs. Tiersch on a piece by Beethoven and a verse by Novalis.The other group collaborated with Alexandra Spadea from New York, to work on the Melonga Triste by S. Piana and J. McDowel.

In the afternoons, the students took masterclasses from members of the Spring Valley Eurythmy Ensemble and practiced the pieces they brought with them for the sharing on Tuesday evening.

One thing that I found particularly remarkable was the absence of complaints on our daily drive back. Despite spending six hours a day practicing eurythmy, the group’s enthusiasm and positivity remained. When I experienced the students doing eurythmy together, they had an understanding of each other on a deeper level. This experience of moving together brought each one of them an earnest heartfelt striving that had transformative power.

Along with the fun this practice brings and the social health it cultivates, one could feel that it connects to something bigger. The effort of each individual contributes to making the group experience complete. This type of movement invites the participants to experience and become aware of the space around themselves, between each other, and their connection to the world.

The festival culminated in a beautiful finale where each group shared their individual group work with one another, showcasing the fruits of their collaborative efforts.

I am grateful to the students who were willing to take time out of their February break to go with me on this journey. Thank you all, it was a very special experience for me.


View this short film about the festival filmed, edited, and directed by WSP student Julian.

Student Reflections

I had an amazing experience growing close to my friends and making friends with many new people. It was a beautiful experience to learn from different people and see the love for eurythmy be expressed in so many different ways. I would love the opportunity to experience something like this again and I think the organization handled the gathering a lot better than I ever expected.
— Paulette, 11th grade

It was a great experience, it was really fun and I enjoyed meeting new people. It was great to see how other people across the country do eurythmy, and I felt that our performance together went really well.
— Luca, 11th grade

I learned so much and my appreciation for eurythmy has grown immensely. Meeting and spending time with all the other Waldorf students and teachers was an amazing experience. I loved all the time I spent there and I can’t wait to go on another trip soon.
— Daphne, 11th grade

This Eurythmy convention was very fun and eye opening for me. During the convention we worked with many different teachers that all taught me something new about eurythmy. I can tell I’m getting better because my movements feel clearer and more controlled. Eurythmy is a really interesting way to move and connect with music, speech, and gestures. Eurythmy taught me a new way to express myself through movement and rhythm, and this convention helped me out a lot with that, and I will be eternally grateful for that wonderful opportunity.
—Tomás, 10th grade

This eurythmy convention was a unique and special experience. I learned a lot about eurythmy and met students from all over the country.
— Samanyu, 11th grade

I was originally a little apprehensive about going to a eurythmy conference, but I grew to really enjoy my time there with everyone. I made a lot of interesting connections and found people who share my interests. Overall, I had a great time at the eurythmy conference and look forward to more opportunities.
— Arnav, 11th grade

Being able to be with people who grew up so differently yet sharing the same experiences was truly special. I got to bond with many people and really immerse myself into the art of eurythmy which made the trip amazing.
— Samih, 11th grade

I Thought Eurythmy Was a Colossal Waste of Time—Then I Embraced the Journey

I Thought Eurythmy Was a Colossal Waste of Time—Then I Embraced the Journey

by | Nov 22, 2024 | Alumni, Alums, Commencement, Curriculum, High School

By Noam Radwin | WSP Class of 2024

Below is the full transcript of Noam’s speech delivered at the Commencement Ceremony in 2024. If you would prefer to watch and listen to his inspiring words, a video recording is available below. Used with permission.

One of the hardest parts of joining a Waldorf school for me was Eurythmy. If you’ve never seen Eurythmy performed, it can be quite hard to wrap your head around. So I’ll do my best to explain it. I’ve described it as kind of like an interpretive dance, but with certain frameworks for what certain movements mean. Also, sometimes it’s like a puppet show. Oh, and whenever it’s performed, the dancers wear flowing silk robes. I’ve certainly received strange looks when talking about it. The Waldorf description sounds more like connecting your soul to the cosmos or making your internal world external, which makes equally less sense at first. The important thing to know is that Eurythmy is a movement art that’s not taught anywhere but Waldorf schools. 

When I started high school, Eurythmy seemed like the most colossal waste of time, and I could not justify spending even one hour a week in what amounted to a complicated puzzle that I was sure was engineered to cause me misery. I remember a moment while doing Eurythmy over Zoom (yeah, that was a thing) when we were told to grip a pencil with our toes and draw a star with our feet. Sitting alone in my room watching the seconds tick by, I wished I could be literally anywhere else. And lost in my own contempt, I missed my ability to actually do the exercise. I snapped out of it when we were asked to show our work, and in a panic, I held up a completely blank piece of paper and blamed my camera’s glare for the evident lack of stars drawn by feet. 

My relationship to your Eurythmy has significantly changed over the years. This would be a strange thing to talk about if it hadn’t. Throughout high school, but especially this past year, I’ve come to respect, and I dare say, even enjoy Eurythmy. So what changed? The biggest thing that changed was my attitude. Initially, when I started doing Eurythmy in person, I was frustrated with the inconsistencies I saw in Eurythmy class. Eurythmy is a group exercise, and our class’ movements weren’t perfectly timed to the music. Each week, we would emphasize different parts of the words, and sometimes in the time between Eurythmy classes, the form we walked would be forgotten or altered. This irritated me to no end, and I remember spending many of my freshman, sophomore and even junior year Eurythmy classes, arguing with my classmates or even my teacher, the lovely Ms. Bergmann. I wanted Eurythmy to be like a math or a science class. Precise, exact and with a definitively correct way of doing it. This mindset made the classes incredibly difficult for me, and I remember when I first saw our junior year schedule with Eurythmy twice a week, I nearly cried. 

So I began incredibly slowly, the process of accepting that Eurythmy was not a precise mechanical endeavor, but a way to express oneself, to work together with others, and to reflect on the space we inhabit as humans. And when performing Eurythmy with this mindset, I discovered a feeling in a moment when the group tunes into something, tunes into some unexplainable connection or force, a moment when the movement becomes bigger than any individual or even the group as a whole. It’s not something I can neatly fit into a scientific explanation or even explain clearly. But since when has Eurythmy been easy to explain? 

I think my experience with Eurythmy is a microcosm of my experience with Waldorf as a whole. I came in with incredibly rigid ideas about how high school should look and how it should act and behave as a person. Time and time again, these preconceived notions were challenged, and I was forced to grow, to push myself to be more understanding and well rounded. There are so many things I’ve learned from this Waldorf school, and even if I never do Eurythmy ever again in my whole life, I know that I now have the skills to try something new, to fail, to not understand, to withhold my judgment and to let myself just feel as I walk into the next chapter of my life. So thank you to my classmates for sticking with me while I was argumentative or frustrated. Thank you Ms. Bergmann for being such a lovely, incredible Eurythmy teacher. And thank you Waldorf for helping push me out of my comfort zone and letting me try something kind of strange, but really cool. Thank you, everyone. Thank you for your gift.