However, none of this could be put into practice in Geneva. Once again, it was the performances themselves which set the ball rolling: they impressed Wolf Dohrn, in particular, so much that in October 1909, in Dresden, he invited Jaques-Dalcroze to turn his visions into reality in Dresden. Construction was already underway on the Garden City. In March 1910, Schmidt’s “Deutsche Werkstätten Hellerau” workshops went into operation; three months later the first families moved into the houses and villas planned by Richard Riemerschmid, Hermann Muthesius, Heinrich Tessenow and others. Jaques-Dalcroze’s method seemed to fit seamlessly into the Hellerau concept. After all, did not Hellerau symbolise a renunciation of the "arhythms" of the Industrial Age? A “laboratoire d’une humanité nouvelle”, as Paul Claudel so aptly put it later? From the start, a music project had been planned to set off the broad workshop programme and the building development, adding festive highlights to develop a community identity. The Prague musicologist Richard Batka had described this idea as far back as 1907 in the magazine "Der Kunstwart" (“the Art Guardian”). As part of the “life reform” attempts to shake off the alienated state of Being, music (the “art of sound”) was to play the main role in unleashing the uniting power of creativity.
Jaques-Dalcroze was presented with several choices of location. He selected Hellerau as it offered him the unique chance to create the hall he so desperately wanted in a building for just that purpose, following the principles of his “Espaces rhythmiques”. The Festival Theatre was intended to fit into the overall Garden City development. However, after long arguments between Dohrn, Schmidt and Riemerschmid, Tessenow’s third design was finally constructed as a solitary building at some distance from the development’s rural, village-like architecture. The unembellished, strictly constructed building, with the guest houses leading up to it, translated Dalcroze’s and Appia’s thoughts into the language of architecture and soon met with international acclaim. The main hall was flanked on three sides by training and rehearsal rooms, separate men’s and women’s washrooms and an entrance hall, foyer, director’s office and library which were flooded with light. Of the main hall itself, Jaques-Dalcroze wrote with excitement to Appia in 1911, after moving into the half-constructed building, “I cannot enter it without a thrill of happiness". The oblong room, with an orchestra pit and lift, did not contain any fixed furnishings; it had no stage or curtain, and the mobile stage elements and audience seating could be arranged as required. The ceiling and walls were hung with strips of white waxed cloth. Behind them, thousands of light bulbs emitted a diffuse, disembodied light and added to the transparency and transcendence of this room which was free of any trace of naturalism. The lighting system was designed by Alexander von Salzmann, a Georgian theatre artist who also designed yin and yang emblems on the two gable ends. It allowed mood lighting to be adjusted in sections gradually, from complete darkness to brilliant light. In this “cathedral of the future”, as Appia had imagined it, the audience and performers were to melt together to form a single spiritual entity. However, the ensemble was not by any means intended to provide a luxury experience of art. Appia's principle "Let us learn to win over the audience within us" called for creative involvement; the aim was for abstraction and stylisation to leave space for people to make their own associations.
