Friday morning, students from the Vancouver Waldorf School and Cascadia arrived at Kay Meek Centre to participate in three performances of the Brothers Grimm ‘The Seven Ravens.’
Patricia, our narrator, welcomed everyone to our performance. Then she explained that eurythmy is defined as movement to music or language. After that our coworkers played three Christmas songs on the bells – ‘There Comes a Galley Laden’, ‘Wake, O Wake’ and ‘Over Stars is Mary Wandering’. Patricia read from Rudolf Steiner’s ‘The Calendar of the Soul’ for the first week of Advent, while it was performed in eurythmy.
Patricia introduced Lorna and her bell choir and told everybody that we will be listening to all the music that Lorna had written for our play.
In the play, a father (William/ Aiden) had seven sons, but he wasn’t satisfied. He wished to have a daughter. One day his wife (Charlotte) granted him his wish and they had a daughter. When she came into the world the seven sons were filled with happiness and joy but then the little baby was sick and she needed to be privately baptized so her father sent the oldest son to bring a jug of water from the springs. When the brothers filled the jug full of water, they all wanted to carry the jug home. They argued and dropped the jug and broke it. Now they were afraid to return home.
Meanwhile back at home their father was waiting for them.
When they didn’t return immediately, he thought they were playing a game. The father was angry, he put a curse on his sons and wished they were ravens and so the sons were turned into ravens and the daughter grew to be a healthy strong girl (Megumi).
Many years later when the little girl grew up to be a teenager (Mary) she overheard people talking and saying, “How beautiful she is” although they were really saying “She was the cause of the death of her seven brothers”.
When she heard this she went over to her mother and father and asked, ‘Did I really have seven brothers?” The parents could no longer keep the secret from their daughter and they answered, “Yes”.
So their daughter secretly went out to look for her brothers.
As she went on her journey she came to the sun but found that it was too hot and unfriendly so she decided to go to the moon but she found the moon to be too cold and dark so she traveled to the stars. The stars were kind and good to her and one of them gave her a chicken bone. When she came to the glass mountain, she realised she had lost the bone that she was given to open the glass mountain. So she cut off her little finger, and with that she could open the glass mountain. Inside she met her long lost brothers. When they met they were filled with joy, they hugged, kissed and went home to their father and mother and lived happily ever after.
In the evening, after a short intermission Eurythmy Northwest and the North Vancouver Eurythmy Group performed seven dances to music on the piano, and to speech.
Thank you to everyone who came to our performances, especially Waldorf School, Glenora Camphill from the Island and our many other guests.
Thank you also to Ruth, Patricia, Lorna and Marianne for all their work and patience. Thank you to the special ladies who made our costumes and to everyone else who helped.