Skinner Releasing Technique
by Lily Kiara
About:
Skinner Releasing Technique (SRT)™ is an innovative approach to dance and movement training, developed by Joan Skinner. A detailed, refined and expansive technique. It is designed to ease the tension by promoting effortless moving and integrated dynamic alignment of the whole self. The teaching strongly draws on guided imagery and hands-on partner studies, supporting an experiential understanding of both the technical and the creative process in movement. There is an ongoing fine-tuning in allowing ourselves to consciously fall into unknown creative territories. It engages many layers of the physical and the imagination that are involved when we dance and create, inside as well as outside.
Embodied listening, inner spaces, presence, dynamic stillness, softening and allowing are some of the essential areas of practice in Skinner Releasing (other than release), that support action into newness. Softening supports the releasing of strength through efficiency and responsiveness. Allowing encourages listening, to one’s own dancing first. This way we can become more available. In the technical work and in creating dances, directing and allowing are side by side, as are stillness and action, receptivity and fierceness. Joan Skinner says: “Letting go is a discipline”. It is a continuous practicing.
SRT™ is different from what has come to be known under the name ‘Release Technique’ in several ways. To name a few:
* It is process oriented, releasing other than release. It trains dancers to be deeply in touch with their own bodies continuously evolving;
* The alignment is approached as multidimensional dynamic alignment, also dynamic stillness;
* It brings together technique and creative process through the use of imagery and they way you are working from imagery in class. It is directed to the becoming aware and evolving of your own individual process and imagination.
* Part of the class, you can work with eyes closed to deepen your inner experience of the dance. Integration of inner awarenesses and outer focus is practised, playing with eyes open and closed.
* There is a possibility of transformation through the use of specific imagery inside the body while moving. It is about experiential understanding and when an image or any offering is actually felt in the body, it changes the dancing self.
Online Skinner Releasing Network for resources and teachers:
www.skinnerreleasingnetwork.org/
Biography:
Lily Kiara (Amsterdam, NL) | dance artist, facilitator, singer-songwriter
“Poetry and stillness are at the heart of my work; poetic embodiment and the depths of stillness, whether working with live musicians or in silence, in group or solo. I’m interested in refinement and layering, in detail of sensation and clarity of action. I love the mystery that’s so clearly part of the dance, while also figuring out how to make some of the intangible tangible in a way that we can actually practice and work through the body with what is beyond the merely physical. I’m interested in revealing what is in the space and stillness being created by the dancer(s) through the dance. When in the theatre I tend to work in stripped down spaces with nothing to gloss over or hide behind, dedicated to connect through the richness and intricacies of the dancing self and all that lives inside and alongside this.”
Lily Kiara danced her first improvised solo performance on invitation of her dance teacher at the age of eight. She started her professional training at the School for New Dance Development in Amsterdam (1990-1994), at Bennington College and Movement Research in NYC. Further on, Skinner Releasing Technique (certified teacher since 2001), martial arts and training in instant composition with teachers such as Julyen Hamilton and Lisa Nelson have greatly influenced her work and evolving vision. The work of her late teacher Suprapto Suryodarmo, Amerta Movement continues to inspire her on numerous levels while practicing and performing in Indonesia. In 2021 she graduated in London as a Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapist. Lily also is active as a folk singer-songwriter, solo and with her band The RIVER.
Lily Kiara has been teaching classes and workshops in Skinner Releasing Technique and Creating (Instant) Dances, sometimes together with a musician or lighting designer. She has been teaching at independent studios, festivals and academies and art institutions throughout Europe, USA, Australia and Indonesia and also guides artists in their process of making their own work.
Dates:
Monday-Friday
February 21st – 25th
Times:
9:00-13:00
Price:
200 €
Registration fee of 80 € required (as part of the 200 €)
