Dalcroze Eurhythmics in Melbourne: 1919-1929

The story of Dalcroze Eurhythmics in Melbourne, and the people who feature in its first decade, form the basis of this narrative paper. It neatly illustrates the Australasian experience of the music education ideas of Emile Jaques-Dalcroze. Typically, initial interest was followed by a period of intense study, promotion and support, which then gradually declined. It was a microcosm of the broad pattern experienced elsewhere in Australia. Background information about several visiting English exponents who promulgated the Dalcroze work in Melbourne, Ethel Driver, Phyllis Crawhall-Wilson and Kitty Haynes, is presented. The parts played by Australians, Cecilia John and Heather Gell, and the establishment of a Victorian Dalcroze Society, in which Professor Meredith Atkinson and Phyllis Lockhart were key figures, are recorded. The countervailing influence of the Bjelke-Petersen School of Physical Culture and similar enterprises is evaluated. Thelma St. John George, the Melbourne music teacher who undertook the three year study in London and Geneva to obtain her teaching qualification, is shown to be an important contributor. The arrival from England of another graduate, Nancy Rosenhain, concludes the decade. It is argued that a lack of critical mass, and an apparent inability to train a new generation of teachers, presented inherent difficulties in sustaining and nurturing a remarkable and dynamic educational method. These factors also seem to have inhibited the development of Dalcroze Eurhythmics in other Australian States.