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Dalcroze had started to present publicly his exercises locally in a limited form as early as 1903. As he developed his method, Dalcroze traveled with his students to different locations and gave fuller demonstrations of his work. These demonstrations always included some of the women students. Dalcroze presented a major exhibition with his students in Solothurn in 1905.

Through these public demonstrations, Dalcroze attracted the attention of German magnate Wolf Dohrn. Wealthy industrialists, Wolf (b. 1873) and his brother Harald (b. 1880) were the children of respected marine scientist Anton Dohrn. The Dohrns wanted to establish a new city outside the environs of Dresden and asked Dalcroze to develop a program and teach in the news city’s school. They began negotiating with Dalcroze in 1909. The brothers offered an attractive 10 year contract.

The establishment of Hellerau had been inspired by the Garden City movement initiated by Ebenezer Howard’s influential book. Howard first published his treatise on city planning in 1898 as Tomorrow: A Peaceful Path to Real Reform. The book was re-issued in 1902 with slight revision as Garden Cities of Tomorrow.

The book describes the establishment of a proposed "Garden City" outside a "Central City." The "Garden City" would combine the best elements of town and country life. Its salient features would include the concept of maximum population. That is, if the population of Garden City rose to a planned target number, a second Garden City would be founded rather than expand the original. The rent for the land (owned in common by the residents of the city) would go into a community fund. Howard also outlines the design of the city and discusses its financial arrangement in some detail. This book led to the establishment of Lechworth in England as well as several communities in the United States.

The Dohrns developed the Hellerau community around a furniture factory. Dalcroze agreed to their offer to move his work to Hellerau, consulted with fellow Swiss innovator Adolphe Appia, and provided the Dohrns with plans for the theatre in the new school.

Dalcroze started his first term at Hellerau with 115 students in attendance in makeshift classrooms in Dresden. The students followed a schedule that started the morning with a series of three 50 minutes sessions with ten-minute breaks. The sessions would cover rhythmic movement, solfege and piano improvisation. The afternoon included sessions devoted to individual instruction, choral rehearsals and ensemble rehearsals. The evenings might included a trip to the opera, concert, or recital in Dresden or a recital by the students or a lecture. The morning sessions were seminal because, according to one student, "Each morning a single problem was approached from three different points of attack in the three classes."

The period in Hellerau marked Dalcroze’s close collaboration with Adolphe Appia and Dalcroze’s greatest fame as a pedagogue. As early as 1899, Appia had called for "musical gymnastics" to train professional actors. Therefore, when Appia witnessed a eurhythmics demonstration in 1906, he quickly contacted Dalcroze by letter and started what came to be a productive friendship.

Appia believed the elements of dramatic art are "fixed." The poetry or "music" of drama is fixed in time. The painting/sculpture/architecture of the stage setting is fixed in space. Appia sought to link these two elements. Appia posed the question, "Do time and space possess some reconciling element?" His answer was, "Movement – mobility -- is the determining and conciliating principle . . . in dramatic art." That is to say, in movement, various lengths or timings of sounds are realized in space.

For special summer activity, Dalcroze and Appia collaborated on the production of opera selections as part of festivals arranged by the Dohrns for the workers and to display the town to guests. In 1912 the student presented the second act of Gluck’s Orfeo et Euridice and Dalcroze’s own version of Echo et Narcisse. The next summer, in 1913, the students presented a complete performance of Orfeo. The festival and the performance attracted thousands of people to Hellerau. Numerous luminaries in music and theatre came to see the performance. In particular, Hellerau attracted the attention of Prince Sergei Wolkonsky, Superintendent of Russia’s Imperial theatres and Susan Canfield, a music teacher from the U.S.A. (These two visitors in particular were influential in bringing eurhythmics to their respective countries.)

The artistic promise of Hellerau quickly faded in 1914. Wolf Dohrn, the elder and leader of the brothers, died in a skiing accident in February of 1914. Also in the spring of 1914, Dalcroze returned to Geneva with Annie Beck and other senior students to work on a pageant, Fete de Juin, scheduled for the summer in Switzerland. By late June Archduke Ferdinand had been shot and World War I began. Dalcroze and Harald Dohrn endeavored for a time to restore the Hellerau school, but the attempts never came to fruition. Dalcroze never returned to Hellerau.

Dalcroze worked largely in Geneva after leaving Hellearu. Over the years, Dalcroze devoted his time and energy to the development of his teaching methods. Dalcroze’s work as a teacher and composer also earned him a number of awards and honors. In 1925 Dalcroze became the 70^th recipient of the bourgeois d’honneur of Geneva, an important civic award, on 21 November 1925. In 1929 the government of France presented Dalcroze the title of "Officer of Public Instruction" and the medal of the Legion of Honor. The city of Geneva also awarded Dalcroze with a cash prize in 1947, honoring his outstanding work in music. In that same year, Dalcroze gained an honorary Ph.D. from the university of Clermont-Ferrand in France. Dalcroze died in Geneva early in the morning on 1 July 1950, a few days before his 85^th birthday.

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