Fri, 21 Nov 2003

Conference on new ideas in marketing organic products

Bochum, 21 November (NNA) – After many years of cultivation and development, organic vegetable products have outstanding taste and nutritional qualities. How best to market these qualities will be discussed at a conference to be held in Kassel on 17 January. Organiser is the “Zukunftsstiftung Landwirtschaft“ agricultural foundation in Bochum

Issues to be discussed by gardeners, farmers, retailers, processors and interested lay people in working groups, discussions forums and lectures include: do organic varieties help against price dumping? How can customers recognise “their” regional and ecologically grown favourite carrots, thus increasing demand? Can retailers and processors raise their profile with organic varieties? When is a product worth its price? Contribution by the value creation chain to financing cultivation.

ENDE

Registration by 9 January 2004

Conference programme and other information: Zukunftsstiftung Landwirtschaft, Postfach 10 08 29, D-44708 Bochum, Germany. Tel. +49 (0)234/5797-141, fax -188, email: willing@zs-l.de, Internet: www.zs-l.de und www.saveourseeds.org

Item reference number: N031121-02EN

Date: 21 November 2003

Copyright 2003 News Network Anthroposophy Limited. All rights reserved. See http://www.nna-news.org/copyright/

More NNA reports at: http://www.nna-news.org/content/

Obituary: Isabelle Rivieres Dekker

The eurythmist Isabelle Rivieres Dekker died in London on 22 October 2003 at the age of 62. Here Peter van Breda looks back on her life.

Forest Row, 21 November (NNA) - Isabelle Dekker was born in Paris in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower on 8 December 1940. She was the only daughter of a father and mother with very contrasting backgrounds.

Isabelle’s father came from French Guyana. Having finished school, he came to Paris to study law. He not only became a successful lawyer, but as the years passed he earned an increasing reputation within the French legal fraternity. He was appointed a judge in the high court and later became the president of the senate of the French parliament. Finally he was appointed the representative of the French parliament for his country of birth, French Guyana.

Isabelle’s mother, in contrast, grew up in Paris. She was a pupil of Rudolf Steiner and was well known in anthroposophical circles. Isabelle’s mother also spoke impeccable German, and was often asked to speak for the French eurythmy in Dornach. She was one of the early translators of Rudolf Steiner’s lectures into French. She was blonde and extremely glamorous, whilst her father was of a lesser build, dark in complexion, but with sparkling blue eyes. Subsequently, Isabelle Dekker was able to transform her illustrious background with great effect into her own special expression of Eurythmy.

There was no Waldorf school in the Paris of her childhood and so Isabelle had to attend a rather strict state-run school. Her teacher sat perched high up on a pedestal, staring down onto the class with a daunting disciplinarian intensity. Isabelle decided at an early age that this was not the form of education she was seeking. To show her disfavour, she became a very vocal rebel of her school system. Finally, after refining the art of protest so well, and turning up to school one day wearing jodhpurs and riding boots, Isabelle was summarily expelled.

Her parents were, of course, extremely challenged by this development, but a stroke of good fortune prevailed. Through a family friend she was able to spend a whole year of her young teenage life at Michæl Hall School in Forest Row. Isabelle boarded in the school hostel under the gentle care and supervision of Elizabeth Edmunds. One can wonder whether Elizabeth Edmunds realised at the time that she had in her keep a kindred soul in the making.

As a young child, Isabelle developed many interests. There was a game, though, which she especially enjoyed playing: it was to become a Robin Hood. How in Paris a young girl was able to find out about the escapades of Robin Hood is quite remarkable. But in many ways the Robin Hood attitude to the less fortunate became one of the leading gestures and virtues of her later life. Isabelle had a warm heart, especially for those who suffered. She not only carried them inwardly, but often went to great lengths to help and care for them in very practical ways. Also, the act of drawing back a bow and aiming an arrow at a given target was to become a further motif in her striving and will to succeed and grow.

Just as soon as Isabelle could manage staying up a little later at night, her mother introduced her to the world of theatre, music, and opera. Isabelle’s childhood and teenage years were embellished and filled with high cultural activities and experiences. The very strong-willed, rebellious child was mellowed and reformed by all that her wise mother brought towards her through the arts. It was also from her mother that she inherited the gift and love of many languages. Isabelle was fluent in French, English, German, and loved each one of them for their special characteristics and expressions. Isabelle had a flair also for painting and drawing. A lesser known love of her life was her joy at being able to sit quietly at home, sewing and making small gifts for her many friends.

At the end of her school days, she joined her parents in the Central African Republic, where her father had been given the task to formulate a new legal system. During this time, Isabelle worked for the American embassy. Her job was extraordinary: she travelled with other young folk far into the jungle, and distributed Bibles to people who had no ability to read. Isabelle explained later that she was nonetheless convinced that the mere receiving of these Bibles meant a great deal to these people far away from the intellectual metropolises of the world.

After this spell in Central Africa, Isabelle’s sights extended even further. She became a public relations officer for a small, emerging African state at the United Nations in New York. It was during the years of Dag Hammarskjöld, whom she met personally, and also Nikita Khrushchev, whom she actually experienced hammering his shoe on the speaker’s lectern in the General Assembly.

This phase of her life also came to a close, and left her unsure how she should move forward. Again it was her intuitive mother who suggested to her that she might think of studying Eurythmy. Isabelle visited Dornach, where an interview took place, and a few months later she became a student in the Lea van der Pals School of Eurythmy. After her graduation, like many other students, she longed to be able to dance with the Stage Group. Peculiarly, she seemed to be overlooked, although she had displayed immense talent even as a student.

It was Else Klink who on the advice of another eurythmist broke this painful silence. Without warning she arrived in Dornach, knocked at Isabelle’s door and informed her that the time had come to relocate to Stuttgart and to join in the work of the Stuttgart Eurythmeum. This was a most profound, life-changing event. From this day on, she dedicated her whole life and all her forces to eurythmy, both on the stage and in teaching. Soon her tremendous talent began to blossom. All of this took place in 1970.

In 1972, Isabelle married her husband, Hajo, in Paris with Else Klink as one of the witnesses. Isabelle deeply cherished her community of life with Hajo. He was the love of her life in every way.

Now, though, began the expansive and hugely creative years of the Stuttgart Eurythmeum. Isabelle soon became one of the acknowledged stars of this very talented ensemble. It could happen that after a solo piece she was applauded with such enthusiasm that she would have to return to the stage to repeat her performance. Of course, she was also able to blend and to allow her talent to flow into group pieces without overshadowing her colleagues.

Isabelle had a most unique ability to dance and to move with grace and expression. There was always an easy flow and smoothness in the way she glided across the stage. Through her innate and fine sensing of the inner aspect of a poem or a piece of music she was able to enter deeply into its essence and then bring it to expression in eurythmy.

Rudolf Steiner once said in an introduction to a eurythmy performance: “What appears to be dancing is actually only of a secondary importance; whereas the visible song which arises through the movements of the arms and hands is the most essential element.” Isabelle knew of this mystery, and was able with great ability to form speech and song into a visible, perceivable expression. The result was often exquisite! She could be totally commanding on the stage. She had the talent to fill out every inch of it with great artistry and intensity. It is not an exaggerated compliment to say that Isabelle Dekker was undoubtedly a queen of movement, grace, and beauty. She truly ennobled the art of eurythmy.

Isabelle loved not only to dance the beautiful, but also to create beautiful surroundings. Her home, the school in which she worked, the clothes she chose for herself, the celebratory events she arranged were always permeated and enriched with the most wonder-filled bounty. The beauty that appeared around her was not artificial, but belonged to the expression of her soul life.

There was, though, another side to her life, where not everything flowed in accordance with her hopes and desires. She had her own personal woes, challenges, and inner sufferings. During the last years she was greatly burdened through the illnesses and aging of her two parents. She nursed both of them to the end of their days here on earth. And then came the dramatic shock. Literally within weeks of her parent’s deaths she developed her own grave symptoms. A mercifully short illness then followed which lead finally to her peaceful passing over on Wednesday 22 October.

In Isabelle’s new existence beyond the threshold, she has entered into the differentiated light of the spirit worlds once more. The flowing glistening colours that she once loved are now intensely all about her. In this light-filled world of grace she will learn to dance once more the dance of the spheres. Free now of the weight of earth after her last months of struggle we may imagine that she sings, and speaks, and moves anew as these lines by John Gillespie Magee suggest:

Oh, I’ve slipped the surly bonds of earth, And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings; Sunward I’ve climbed and joined the tumbling mirth Of sun-split clouds – and done a hundred things You have not dreamed of – wheeled and soared and swung High in the sunlit silence. Hov’ring there, I’ve chased the shouting wind along and flung My eager craft through footless halls of air.

Up, up the long delirious burning blue I’ve topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace, Whenever lark, or even eagle, flew; And, while with silent, lifting mind I’ve trod The high untrespassed sanctity of space, Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.

ENDS

This is an edited version of the eulogy held by Peter von Breda at the funeral of Isabelle Dekker in the Christian Community, Forest Row, on 25 October 2003

Item: N031121-01EN Date: 21 November 2003

Copyright 2003 News Network Anthroposophy Limited. All rights reserved. See http://www.nna-news.org/copyright/

More NNA reports at: http://www.nna-news.org/content/