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Skinner Releasing Technique (SRT) created by Joan Skinner (USA) is practised and taught worldwide. Emslie, M.A. (2021) describes it as "a somatic movement, dance and creative practice with a core underlying principle of releasing blocked energy, held tension, and habitual patterns of body mind. It enables us to move with greater freedom and ease whilst awakening creativity and spontaneity". [1]
"By focusing on personal, kinaesthetic experience of essential principles of movement, SRT may enhance any movement style whilst fostering artistic sensibility and creative unfoldment" [2]
SRT is unusual in that technical aspects of moving and dancing, such as posture and alignment are experienced as creative explorations that take form as spontaneous movement. Technical and creative aspects of practice are indistinguishable.
Joan Skinner created an Introductory Level of SRT, as well as an Ongoing Level and there is a children's pedagogy in existence. The introductory Level consists of 15 classes and the Ongoing Level is that of 12 classes. The Ongoing classes allow participants to slip deeper in to practice and they are more spacious than the introductory Level classes. There is also an Advanced Level. Skinner described the shift from Ongoing Level to Advanced Level as being "'when things start dissolving ... there is only consciousness left". [3]
Whatever the level of classes, the pedagogies consist of key activities that are, Checklists, Image Actions, Partner Graphics, Partner Dances/Partner Movement Studies, Movement Studies (with an image) and Totalities. [4]
SRT sits beneath the canopy term of Release Techniques and thus is part of a wider Release community. However, Skinner was very clear about differentiating Releasing from Release based practice. The difference she pointed out is that Releasing is ongoing and so we notice and respond to what is arising moment by moment; where as Release Technique is understood to be an aesthetic of the body moving with ease, fluidity, lightness, power and strength. Releasing is the means by which we achieve those qualities. [5]
It has been suggested that this section be split out into another articletitled Joan Skinner . (Discuss) (August 2022) |
Joan Skinner (1924-2021) was born in Minneapolis (USA) in the early 1920s. As a child she participated in 'interpretive dancing' classes led by Cora Bell Hunter - who had been taught by Mabel Elsworth Todd, author of the book The Thinking Body. Bell Hunter's classes, especially her use of imagery, had a long-lasting effect on Skinner and she later told her students about the classes.[ citation needed ]
On leaving high school in 1942 Skinner gained a scholarship to study theatre, music and dance at Bennington Arts College, Vermont.[ citation needed ] She met Martha Graham at Bennington College and Graham suggested that Skinner should continue dance study in New York. Once Skinner had graduated from Bennington, she enrolled at The Martha Graham Centre and eventually became a member of the Martha Graham Dance Company in which she danced Appalachian Spring (1944), Dark Meadow (1946), and the premier of Diversion of Angels (1948).[ citation needed ]
After a number of years of teaching at the Martha Graham Centre and performing in the company, she left in 1950. On leaving she became a member of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company. It was during that time that she embarked on practice and research which became Skinner Releasing Technique. [6]
Skinner left the Cunningham company in 1953.[ citation needed ] Shortly afterward she went on a concert tour choreographed by Jerome Robbins and Ray Harrison. She continued to perform and choreograph but a shift in her career happened in the 1960s. From 1961-64 she taught at the University of Illinois, Champaign. From 1964-66 she was artist in Residence at The Walker Arts Centre and Tyrone Guthrie Theatre in Minneapolis after which she returned to the University of Illinois for a year, 1966-1967. It was with her dance students at Illinois that the beginnings of Skinner Releasing were first shared and practiced. Skinner credits her Illinois students as giving her practice the name Releasing. She said "They [the students] just kept saying, we're doing the releasing technique. It must have been because I was saying, Well we're releasing this, we're releasing that". [7]
In 1967 she became a full-time staff member at The University of Washington, Seattle. From 1985 she became Head of the Dance Department. She retired in 1987 but continued to teach and develop Skinner Releasing Technique until the early 2000s.
She lived in Seattle with her husband, Jim Knapp, a musician.
Modern dance in the United States is a form of contemporary dance that was developed in the United States in the 20th century. African American modern dance also developed a distinct style.
Martha Graham was an American modern dancer and choreographer. Her style, the Graham technique, reshaped American dance and is still taught worldwide.
In dance, release technique is any of various dance techniques that focus on breathing, muscle relaxation, anatomical considerations, and the use of gravity and momentum to facilitate efficient movement. It can be found in modern and postmodern dance, and has been influenced by the work of modern dance pioneers, therapeutic movement techniques such as Skinner Releasing Technique, Feldenkrais and Alexander Technique, and yoga and martial arts.
Bennington College is a private liberal arts college in Bennington, Vermont, United States. Founded as a women’s college in 1932, it became co-educational in 1969. It is accredited by the New England Commission of Higher Education.
Doris Batcheller Humphrey was an American dancer and choreographer of the early twentieth century. Along with her contemporaries Martha Graham and Katherine Dunham, Humphrey was one of the second generation modern dance pioneers who followed their forerunners – including Isadora Duncan, Ruth St. Denis, and Ted Shawn – in exploring the use of breath and developing techniques still taught today. As many of her works were annotated, Humphrey continues to be taught, studied and performed.
The Denishawn School of Dancing and Related Arts, founded in 1915 by Ruth St. Denis and Ted Shawn in Los Angeles, California, helped many perfect their dancing talents and became the first dance academy in the United States to produce a professional dance company. Some of the school's more notable pupils include Martha Graham, Doris Humphrey, Lillian Powell, Charles Weidman, Jack Cole, and silent film star Louise Brooks. The school was especially renowned for its influence on ballet and experimental modern dance. In time, Denishawn teachings reached another school location as well - Studio 61 at the Carnegie Hall Studios.
Hanya Holm is known as one of the "Big Four" founders of American modern dance. She was a dancer, choreographer, and above all, a dance educator.
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Martha Hill was one of the most influential American dance instructors in history. She was the first Director of Dance at the Juilliard School, and held that position for almost 35 years.
Anna Halprin was an American choreographer and dancer. She helped redefine dance in postwar America and pioneer the experimental art form known as postmodern dance and referred to herself as a breaker of the rules of modern dance. In the 1950s, she established the San Francisco Dancers' Workshop to give artists like her a place to practice their art. Exploring the capabilities of her own body, she created a systematic way of moving using kinesthetic awareness. With her husband, landscape architect Lawrence Halprin, she developed the RSVP cycles, a creative methodology that includes the idea of scores and can be applied broadly across all disciplines. Many of her creations have been scores, including Myths in the 1960s which gave a score to the audience, making them performers as well, and a highly participatory Planetary Dance (1987). Influenced by her own battle with cancer and her healing journey, Halprin became known for her work with the terminally ill patients as well as creative movement work in nature.
Jane Dudley was an American modern dancer, choreographer, and teacher. Inspired by her mentor, choreographer Martha Graham, Dudley helped bring her movement inspired by social ills to the American Dance Festival at Connecticut College in the 1950s.
Modern dance is a broad genre of western concert or theatrical dance which includes dance styles such as ballet, folk, ethnic, religious, and social dancing; and primarily arose out of Europe and the United States in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It was considered to have been developed as a rejection of, or rebellion against, classical ballet, and also a way to express social concerns like socioeconomic and cultural factors.
Bessie Schonberg was a highly influential dancer, choreographer and teacher of the 20th century. She was at the center of contemporary modern dance from her beginning at Bennington College up until her death in 1997. Her career spanned sixty-five years and she helped mold a new generation of modern dancers including Lucinda Childs, Elizabeth Keen, Meredith Monk and Carolyn Adams (dancer).
Capturing a sense of the life and work of Bessie Schonberg is possible if one evokes the image of a prism, a multi-face crystalline object which cannot be perceived in its entirety, but can be appreciated and understood by catching glimpses of light from its different sides.
Eve Gentry was a modern dancer, and later a Pilates master instructor. She was an original disciple of Joseph Pilates, and a master teacher of his technique to generations of instructors. She helped found the Dance Notation Bureau in New York City and later in 1991 she co-founded the Institute for the Pilates Method in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Mary De Haven Hinkson was an African American dancer and choreographer known for breaking racial boundaries throughout her dance career in both modern and ballet techniques. She is best known for her work as a member of the Martha Graham Dance Company.
Somatics is a field within bodywork and movement studies which emphasizes internal physical perception and experience. The term is used in movement therapy to signify approaches based on the soma, or "the body as perceived from within", including Skinner Releasing Technique, Alexander technique, the Feldenkrais Method, Eutony Gerda Alexander, Rolfing Structural Integration, among others. In dance, the term refers to techniques based on the dancer's internal sensation, in contrast with "performative techniques", such as ballet or modern dance, which emphasize the external observation of movement by an audience. Somatic techniques may be used in bodywork, psychotherapy, dance, or spiritual practices.
Graham technique is a modern dance movement style and pedagogy created by American dancer and choreographer Martha Graham (1894–1991). Graham technique has been called the "cornerstone" of American modern dance, and has been taught worldwide. It is widely regarded as the first codified modern dance technique, and strongly influenced the later techniques of Merce Cunningham, Lester Horton, and Paul Taylor.
In dance, floorwork refers to movements performed on the floor. Floorwork is used extensively in modern dance, particularly Graham technique, Hawkins technique, and breakdancing. Some dance training practices, notably Floor-Barre, consist entirely of floorwork.
Mary O'Donnell Fulkerson (1946–2020) was an American dance teacher and choreographer. Born in the United States, she developed an approach to expressive human movement called 'Anatomical Release Technique' in the US and UK, which has influenced the practice of dance movement therapy, as seen in the clinical work of Bonnie Meekums, postmodern dance, as exemplified by the choreography of Kevin Finnan, and the application of guided meditation and guided imagery, as seen in the psychotherapeutic work of Paul Newham.
Stuart Hodes was an American dancer, choreographer, dance teacher, dance administrator and author. He was Martha Graham's partner, danced on Broadway, in TV, film, in recitals, and with his own troupe. His choreography has appeared on the Boston Ballet, Dallas Ballet, Harkness Ballet, Joffrey Ballet, San Francisco Ballet and other troupes. He taught at the Martha Graham School, Neighborhood Playhouse, NYC High School of Performing Arts, headed dance at NYU School of the Arts and Borough of Manhattan Community College. He was Dance Associate for the NY State Council on the Arts, dance panelist for the National Endowment for the Arts, president of the National Association of Schools of Dance, and a member of the First American Dance Study Team to China in 1980, returning in 1992 to teach the Guangzhou modern dance troupe.