Fairy Tale Magic: Performance at the community of adults with special needs

Every time when I think of those performances I have experienced in Camphill Community in North England, incredible warmth comes up to me reminding the days I shared something very precious with the people with special needs.

Every year on the second advent Sunday in Botton Village, Eurythmy Fairy Tale Performance takes place and stirs the air in the big hall. It has been performed for so many years, I certainly don't know how long, but I know some of the villagers have lived and grew with this event all through their adult life.
This group is lead each year by one of the eurythmy teacher in Camphill Eurythmy School, Evamaria Rascher. She has been in camphill for long, and does therapy work in the village too. These few years she has been travelling annually to Camphill in Africa and provides them artistic performances and therapy to the children, and adults with special needs.

She starts to prepare Fairy Tale program at the beginning of September with the village eurythmy class once in every week. I was so lucky to be able to take part in her creations over two years.

She always starts with the class,

"Light of the sun, in my heart I take"

and how humbly we would gather our sun light into our heart.
When we end our class she always brings everyone in the circle and we would hold hands, looking at each other with our curious eyes. This has been one of our favourite moment, and then sun-light we would take again before we go home for supper.

It was fantastic as an eurythmy student to be able to witness how much they adore eurythmy- the special needs in Camphill are the great fan of eurythmy full stop. No critisism, no judgement. Even for our end of term performances. Some comes and only sleep through the performances but still, they do keep coming!
And there were so much breath taking moments in the class- how beautifully they do eurythmy. It is their non-intellectual being which allows them to be wide open and to absorb the nourishment of life itself in eurythmy. They are a real social being which one can learn so much from. Instead of demanding their individual ego, they accepts, they allows. And true wisdom in them is that they can be just what they are. Not too big, not too little. Just are.

One thing really surprised me was the fact how difficult it is for them to walk "three fold walking". "Lift" and "place" are fine. But "carrying" of the feet, in between moments when we need to find our uprightness in ourselves, they struggle. But the eurythmy are also like them. It doesn't demand, it accepts and allows. In my eyes they have very healthy bondage with eurythmy beings. The "beings" of eurythmy are very similar in many ways to the people with special needs, something about the warmth in their hearts and vitality in life- and how easily and naturally the trust and the love becomes the fundamental attitude in life.


On the day of the performance, we would have so much excitement and many interesting mishaps.
All the eurythmy students help them dress and
do their make-ups. I love it when Evamaria dress all the ladies as "Princess".

"Everyone wants to be the princess." she says, "So they are."

When the performance comes to an end––– everybody in Botton knows what comes next; it is their favourite "applause-time"! This moment they are the true heros, bursting out with joy for their achievement, and they would keep bowing, bowing and bowing carried by the raging applause which feels like it will never end. I've never be able to look at them without feeling something warm in my eyes.

Eurythmy is alive in them. It is their life, it is their joy, it is their friend. They know eurythmy being will just be with them, and let them be simply what they are. Most magical, at the same time most ordinary- just like what they are.

Shino