About Skinner Releasing Technique and Sensing Sentience - somatic movement practices

Skinner Releasing Technique (SRT) is a pioneering approach to dance, movement and creative process that has evolved from the simple principle that when we are releasing physical tension, we can move with greater freedom, power and articulation.

SRT was developed, from the early 1970s onward, by Joan Skinner, who had danced with the Martha Graham and Merce Cunningham companies before embarking on her own exploration of movement as a somatic process. Since then, it has become a significant influence on dance training and creative practice around the world. By focusing on personal, kinaesthetic experience of essential principles of movement, SRT may enhance any movement style whilst fostering artistic sensibility and creative unfoldment.

In SRT classes, spontaneous movement evoked by guided poetic imagery, supported by music and sound, enables a creative and easily accessible exploration of technical movement principles such as multi-directional alignment, suppleness, suspension, economy andautonomy. As participants let go of habitual holding patterns, they are supported to cultivate an increasing sensitivity to their own physical and imaginative experience. The result can be a deeply embodied awareness of new possibilities in how they move – both inside the studio as dancers and creators, and in daily life.

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Sensing Sentience is a practice in development by Julia Adzuki, expanding SRT into outdoor environments and weaving together ecological awareness, tactility and posthuman phenomenology. SRT works with nature-based kinaesthetic imagery; relating inner anatomical spaces and outer landscapes with the intention of easing tension and developing an effortless kind of moving in dance. Sensing Sentience is a decomposition of dance practice into an expanded performance with place, considering alignment as not only within the human body but in relationship within an ecology.

The aim of this practice is to connect people and places through non-verbal, embodied conversations with inner and outer landscapes. Posthuman phenomenology and the intelligence of plants are introduced through scores for intra-actions with the purpose of inviting resonant relations within local ecologies.