History
SRTCollective is an international community facilitating SRT-based research and practice through activities that include the annual Summer Intensives. SRTCollective explores the present potential and significance of SRT. Residing and working in Canada, Europe, Norway, South Africa, Turkey, UK and the U.S., members bring their individual skills, expertise, and experience to shared practice, research, and discussions.
Skinner Releasing Technique is a pioneering approach to dance and movement training that facilitates a deep kinaesthetic experience of movement. Guided poetic imagery and hands-on partner studies stimulate the process of letting go of one’s holding patterns and preconceptions, releasing new possibilities in how we perceive and how we move. An investigation of dynamic and multidirectional alignment leads one to discover more freedom, strength, effortlessness, and nuance
In dancing. The poetic images, interwoven with specific music, touch the imagination, triggering spontaneous movement and transformative states of consciousness that reveal a primal grace. SRT is a self-propelling process that supports each individual’s way of learning and enhances any activity and movement style. It is recognized as a significant way of engaging the whole self while integrating technical growth with creative process.
A bit of history…
During the late seventies and through the eighties Joan Skinner was extensively teaching Releasing classes in Seattle, both at the University of Washington (UW) and at the Belltown Studio with a pool of devoted and experienced Releasers, the so-called Veterans. They included among many others Teresa Moriarty, Robert Davidson, Sally Metcalf, Jodi-Blackburn-Roehl and Kris Wheeler. Together with Joan, the Veterans created the SRT School in the Belltown studio, which offered Releasing classes for children, adults, and pregnant women, as well as improvisation workshops, throughout the years. A great number of people attended the Studio. Joan also directed the Skinner Releasing Dance Company, which toured mainly in the US.
During this prosperous time, Joan created the Skinner Releasing Summer Intensive, a 2-3 week long in-depth training for adults in Seattle. The teaching was based on the set of materials covered at the Belltown Studio. Some of the Veterans, Teresa Moriarty, Robert Davidson and Sally Metcalf, were part of the faculty and actively involved in articulating the Introductory and Ongoing pedagogy.
Throughout the years, these Summer Intensives shaped and formalized Skinner’s teachings. Her pedagogy was then taught in a 3 weeks course at UW. It became the formal Teacher Training Certification Program that still exists today. These Summer Intensives – that still took place in Seattle until 2006 – contributed to creating a vibrant and interdependent Skinner Releasing community worldwide, with students joining the courses from different states and countries.
Below are a few teachers’ testimonials reflecting on these formative and exciting times.
My summers through the 1990 into the mid 2000 were often spent in Seattle, attending intensives SRT workshops. I was able to dive in deeply as a student, a teacher trainee and then as a teacher over those years. I’m so grateful to have been surrounded by the releasing community there, especially the Veterans, their wit, energy, imagination and passion was truly inspiring. Joan presence was always central during these summers and her dedication to the classes a total inspiration. Through the extensive teaching of her work, so many more SRT communities now exist and thrive throughout the world. Reverberating gloriously, especially in long weeks of intensive SRT workshops, building communities and lasting legacy. Long may it continue….
Gaby Agis
In 1979, I attended a 3 week SRT summer intensive and my world was completely rocked. My college dance professor had seen a flyer and recommended it to me because I was writing my thesis on “The Use of Imagery to Facilitate Neuromuscular Re-education”. Fast forward to 1985: I attended another SRT summer intensive (but I was now living in Boulder, Colorado) and the Intensive incorporated low-flying trapeze. The blending of SRT and aerial dance was a visceral, spiritual, emotional, and mental LOVE. Three years later I founded Frequent Flyers® Aerial Dance and have been teaching aerial and SRT for 38 years under the name “Aerial Release Technique”.
Nancy E. Smith
