Beyond Technique: Letting Go and the Art of Making Dances

Skinner Releasing Technique (SRT) is of course a dance technique, but what of its application to creative practice, to making dance or other art works? As a dance technique SRT allows us to let go of holding and of habitual patterns, and to unveil possibilities both inside and outside the studio in our dancing and in our being. It also can stimulate the imagination in remarkable ways, and allow availability to letting go of preconceptions of who we are, in our moving, in our lives, and therefore in our creative self.
Releasing is a multi faceted, multi-directional experience. And so these states of letting go, process, availability, imagery and allowing are intertwined and many layered. It fosters a non-linear and ever shifting process of change. We learn to become available to multiple states at once.
SRT has been fundamental in my own creative process and in my making of dance works, both performative and for screen; and at times this has to do with direct application and use of some of the many images in the pedagogy.
This chapter provide an insight into how SRT has informed and supported my making. It will explore how these underpinnings can permeate creative acts, what the lived experience of that is, and offer possibilities of ways in to accessing these approaches for the development of dance works.