It is great to see the activity in this group while I have been away. There are many themes that I would like to pick up in the next weeks, as I hope that this group can become an e-learning environment.

I would like to start by outlining my personal motivation for this community engagement. In reading the comments that have come in while I have been away, I sense a familiar sadness rising from the gulf between the longing for eurythmy and its fulfilment. I assume that fault persists in me. My response is to examine how I am contributing to promoting elitism and therefore not contributing to the learning environment.

When we use email, or write online it is so easy to create misunderstandings because the writer may not be in touch with the reader and the reader may not be in tune with the writer. The reader can project another meaningful reading into the text and the writer becomes isolated, surrounded by the apparent meaning conjured up by the reader. I find it tremendously difficult to write transparent prose for online reading and I shudder in my mainframe as I type this.

It seems much easier to create a web of intriguing mystery than to get my real message across. I can exercise no control over you, the reader, so my aim is to let every possible reading become a creative process from which I can learn by listening carefully through the responses.

A similar problem exists in eurythmy performances. The eurythmy is received through the personal filters of each audience member's perception. Considerable good will is required on all sides, which includes an unrelenting sensitivity to the audience from the performers.

It is not so different in eurythmy classes, although there is greater potential for immediate feedback and clarification. The interaction between those who wish to learn and those who wish to help them learn is a delicate no-one's wonderland, a creative threshold. The leader begins to build bridges towards others, but cannot complete any of them alone. The result may still engender a sense of isolation on several sides, and the eurythmist may be branded as elite and thereby experience an exhausting imprisonment.

I have just been on holiday in the Portuguese Azores, a visitor looking at the lives of people who speak a language I do not share. I wonder if I have been experiencing some of the feelings that come up when novices enter a eurythmy class? 

In all fairness, the growth of elitism is eurythmists' own doing. I personally worry when eurythmists anchor their justification on a 'doctor quote', or stand rooted in imitation of a revered teacher. I feel that eurythmy can only thrive out of the heart's life of all present. Our art cannot rest exclusively on the ashes of Steiner's insights or the bones of our ancestors. As a eurythmy teacher I do not wish to be a hierophant. I feel bound to be a creative researcher in eurythmy classes. Does this view isolate me from others I would wish to be empowered through eurythmy?

My ideal in a class is to enable eurythmy to enter the direct life experience of all present. I endeavour to serve the spirits of the art and the learners. I can only do this by stepping into the learning environment as a learner. I hope that through this group I will become less isolated, and learn to communicate in a way that will serve you, the group members. I am sure we will share disagreements yet I hope that through dialogue in this group you will all help me become a better eurythmist.