Suffice to say that you helped me through your performance to take another step in this life.
Audience member and Eurythmist– Eire
What a relief to experience a speaker/actor of Geoffrey Norris’ calibre! This was no speech-artist hiding behind a neat podium, complete with texts at the ready. He not only commanded the whole stage, moving freely to different positions for different poems, but everything had been learnt by heart. His wonderfully sonorous voice rang out effortlessly both in the more introspective pieces and also melted into song more than once. He even performed the most extraordinary speech acrobatics when he “sang” the “Song of the Loch Ness Monster” by Edwin Morgan Geoff must surely count as one of the most versatile and distinguished speech artists in the world.
Christopher Cooper -Devon
What magic star-dust descended on the vast stage of the Goetheanum when three outstanding artists, each in their different way, wove unforgettable, moving pictures! What an original, daring conception this was! As their attractive programme-notes told the audience, “Water Islands” was “a conversation between speech, music and eurythmy”. We experienced a waking-dream landscape progressing through tensions and resolutions, through humour and the deeply serious. Sometimes we were in the depths of the sea, sometimes on dry land.Maren Stott is a unique eurythmist, capturing the beauty and etheric delicacy of traditional eurythmy, yet also adding something quite new. Hardly ever leaving the stage, except for brief changes behind a curtain arranged off-centre, she delighted the large audience at the international English Week with her humorous, quirky, limpid, elfin moods and a vast array of liquid movements. Whether moving to Debussy’s iridescent music or embodying Ariel’s words “Full fathom five” from Shakespeare’s The Tempest, or flying with G.M. Hopkin’s falcon in “Windhover”, or exploring man’s mortality with Kathleen Raine’s fine poem “Introspection”, she showed a mastery of different styles. What a relief to experience a speaker/actor of Geoffrey Norris’ calibre! This was no speech-artist hiding behind a neat podium, complete with texts at the ready. He not only commanded the whole stage, moving freely to different positions for different poems, but everything had been learnt by heart. His wonderfully sonorous voice rang out effortlessly both in the more introspective pieces and also melted into song more than once. He even performed the most extraordinary speech acrobatics when he “sang” the “Song of the Loch Ness Monster” by Edwin Morgan. In this piece, Maren too was very active, weaving in and out of billowing smoke (a successful touch!) creating an amazing atmosphere. Both artists collaborated in the most charming of humoresques as two “worms” in the hilarious yet poignant poem by Carl Sandberg. As advising director, Sarah Kane’s sure dramatic eye was here in evidence. From this performance, Geoff must surely count as one of the most versatile and distinguished speech artists in the world. Maren too will be seen as one of the most gifted and expressive artists in her own field. Nearly last but certainly not least, Alan Stott (piano) 7 contributed the music with a seemingly effortless virtuosity, capturing with great sensitivity the moods of “Mist”; “Ondine” the water-sprite; “Puck” the airy-spirit; “L’Isle joyeuse”, an island over-brimming with joy, but also the bleak landscape of “Footsteps in the snow”. All this music was by Debussy, to whom most eurythmists must surely be eternally grateful for the scope he gives them. Let us hope that this kind of fluid and highly imaginative concept – banishing the endless “ons-and-offs” with long pauses – will gain more and more friends. The creating of an organically evolving tapestry of sound, colour and movement must surely have a secure future. Finally, no praise can be too high for Peter Jackson’s masterly control of the lighting, working with John Watson’s lighting design with its myriads of nuances and many a breathtaking change of colours. This programme deserves to be seen by many other audiences after its very successful première in the birthplace of eurythmy.
Christopher Cooper, S. Devon