Gerda Alexander (February 15, 1908 – February 21, 1994) was a dancer, director and teacher of DalcrozeEurhythmics who was born in Germany and later got a Danish citizenship.
Gerda Alexander was involved with the avant-garde movements in the arts, education and body culture in Germany during the early decades of the 20th century, and later settled in Copenhagen, Denmark. Her research into tension and relaxation led her to coin the term ‘eutony’, which was subsequently also used to identify her work (known as Eutony or Eutonie Gerda Alexander®). In developing a lifelong research on muscle tone, Gerda Alexander has collaborated with medical, educational and arts training institutions across Europe, the Middle East, Asia, Oceania, and South, Central and North America.
Gerda Alexander was a pioneer in somatic education studies, and her school in Copenhagen trained professionals for 45 years. The term ‘eutony/eutonia’ has attracted widespread interest, and related methods are taught in professional training schools in several countries around the world.
Life and work
Early life and education
Gerda Alexander was born in Wuppertal, Germany, and her parents were enthusiasts of Dalcroze Eurhythmics, passing on to her a similar interest in the arts. Her parents avoided telling her explicitly about Dalcroze, but Gerda Alexander had her first contact with his work through some photos of the first festival of the Dalcroze school in Hellerau, followed by a Rhythmics course given by Otto Blensdorf in her city in the same period, and insisted on joining the classes.
She attended the Dalcroze Eurhythmics school of Otto Blensdorf (the Blensdorfschule für körperlich-musikalische Erziehung, lately named as Blensdorfschule für Rhythmik) in Wuppertal from 1915 until 1929. From 1922, at the age of 14, Gerda Alexander began to get involved in the activities, trips, stage productions and as an assistant teacher at Blensdorf's school and its affiliates in Essen, Düsseldorf, Köln, Remscheis, Solingen, etc. Around 1923, Gerda directed her first play open to the public, staging the first two acts of Humperdinck's Hänsel and Gretel. In 1924, Otto Blensdorf opened the Blensdorf-Schule (Dalcroze Seminar) für professionellen Rhythmik-Unterricht, a professional training for those who were interested in becoming Dalcroze Eurhythmics teachers, thus providing the pedagogical foundations of the method. Gerda Alexander was part of the first intake of the Seminar. thumb|180x180px|Rehearsal of Orpheus and Eurydice in Festpielhaus Hellerau, Dresden, Germany, 1912|alt=
Through her early experiences, Gerda Alexander got in touch with the development of the modern dance in Germany. She performed in the local theatre in Wuppertal (at that time, known as the Vereinigten Stadttheatern Barmen-Elberfeld) and in international congresses through the country in the 1920s (e.g. GESOLEI). In later interviews and remembrances, Gerda Alexander referred to personalities as Rudolf Laban, Mary Wigman, Elsa Gindler, Heinrich Jacoby, Bess Mensendieck, Loheland school (Louise Langgaard e Hedwig von Rohden) and Anna Herrmann, and highlighted how the observation of their students were important on the development of her work.
Two of Gerda Alexander's teaching internships were remarkable. In 1926, Otto Blensdorf's oldest daughter and collaborator, Charlotte Blensdorf, was invited to teach Dalcroze Eurythmics for children and teachers at the first Institute for Scientific Pedagogical Research under the leadership of Peter Petersen, internationally known for the Jena-Plan. At the same period, Charlotte was also invited by the state government to teach at the Staatlichen Erziehungsheimen Stadtroda, a residential institution that cared for around 600 children and adolescents up to the age of 21 with physical disabilities, mental disorders, children of single mothers, prostitutes or mothers aged 13 or 14, including those from dysfunctional homes and with a criminal record in the city of Stadtroda. Gerda Alexander completed a year of practical work as Blensdorf's assistant in these experiences between 1926 and 1927, to which she refers as being "the best pedagogical education of my life, being able to come into contact with all these cases, with the guidance of teachers who have profoundly influenced my work".
thumb|Gerda Alexander, sitting on a chair by the window, talks with a student in Talloires, France, 1985. Source: eutoni.dk|alt=|180x180px
In 1959, Gerda Alexander organized the "First International Congress for Release of Tension and Functional Movement" in Copenhagen with the support of the Danish Ministry of Education. On this event, she gathered pioneering psychosomatic researchers and methods creators (methods later denominated as "Somatics", "somatic practices" or "somatic education techniques").
Gerda Alexander worked with institutions as diverse as the Fröbel College and Fröbel schools, Malmö Symphony Orchestra, Karolinska Institute, Ericastiftelsen, Frederiksberg Folkemusikhøjskolen, Sydsvenska Gymnastikistitut, Private Theater School, Royal Theatre Copenhagen, Theater Academy, Danish Broadcasting House (orchestra, choir and staff), Royal Music Conservatory, Danmarks Lærerhøjskole (Department of Music), Rigshospitalet, Dalcroze Societies, CEMEA (Centres d'Entraînement aux Méthodes d'Education Active, in France), and others. She gave lectures and workshops in Denmark, Sweden, Norway, France, Austria, Germany, Switzerland, USA, Israel, Greece, Italy, Holland, Mexico, Venezuela, Belgium and Argentina.
Gerda Alexander died six days after her 86th birthday in Wuppertal, where she lived in her old age. Her students today continue to teach her work in several places in the world.
The creation of Eutony
By her ongoing reflections with her students of all ages, an enthusiastic inquiry about artistic development and the overcoming of her difficulties, Gerda Alexander made her own research on human movement. In her own words: "I tried to find out how I could develop every person's own expression without programming him/her. At the same time, there was my personal need to learn how to survive"thumb|272x272px|Gerda Alexander with a student on walking sticks, probably in the 1960s. Source: eutoni.dkAlexander found ways of somatically modulate and regulate neuromuscular tone. The word "eutony" (from Greek Eu: good – and Latin Tonus: tension, the grade of tension or elasticity of muscle fibers) was coined with the help of the Dr. Alfred Bartussek. According to Alexander, "we use high tonus for effort, and medium tonus or low tonus for rest and sleep. In Eutony, we learn to use the best tonus for the action in question".
The psychosomatic processes initiated by her classes were reported by the students, recognizing benefits in their psychic well-being and in their daily life, and Alexander began to receive medical referrals and make partnerships with medical centers, treating patients that "specialists could not give any hope of improvement" as paraplegic, spastic, amputees, with psychosomatic cases, among others. Scientific theories came a posteriori to support her practices, as she describes "from that time, new finding in neurophysiology have become an important support of our work, and our practical discoveries can be explained step by step".