Published: 27 September 2021 
Available now from Triarchy Press only: see below
List Price: £25
Format: ~ Paperback - 300 pages
Size: 15.2 x 22.9 cm
ISBN: 978-1-913743-29-1
Tags: Joan Skinner, Skinner Releasing, movement, dance, somatics, embodiment
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Readership:

Designed as an introduction, guide and stimulus for anyone interested in the work of Joan Skinner and the practice of Skinner Releasing Technique.

Related titles:

Nine Ways of Seeing a Body
Embodied Lives
Body & Performance

See our other titles in:
Movement & Somatics
Mythogeography & Walking
People in Society

Skinner Releasing Technique
A Movement and Dance Practice

edited by:    Manny Emslie


Skinner Releasing Technique (SRT), created by Joan Skinner, is a somatic movement, dance and creative practice with a core underlying principle of releasing blocked energy, held tension and habitual patterns in body mind. It enables us to move with greater freedom and ease whilst awakening creativity and spontaneity.
 
The 21 contributors to this book describe how SRT informs their own movement and/or dance practice and influences wider fields of practice including meditation, architecture, poetic listening, visual art, writing, technology and choreography. For them SRT is a transformative and lifelong practice that deepens connections with self, other, more than human life forms and with natural and urban landscapes.
 
This is a book for anyone drawn to explore body mind, somatic, movement and dance practices, and for those who are exploring ways of living in the world creatively, empathically and with more ease and natural grace.

Reviews

"At a time when people globally are experiencing physical, relational challenges, and seeking
ways to sustain creative communities, this book is inspiring. It shares the knowledge these seasoned practitioners hold and I was left invigorated, compelled through a sense of urgency to keep dance and imagination at the centre of my life."

From a review by Penny Collinson in Choreographic Practices, Volume 13 Number 1,
Penny is former senior lecturer at University of Central Lancashire (UCLan) (1998–2021), Preston, UK, a Somatic Movement Educator and Therapist.

Read the full review
Visit the Choreographic Practices Journal website
Contents
Introduction – Manny Emslie
How to Disappear Completely – Sally Metcalf
A Non-Linear Approach To Being Alive – Stephanie Skura
Movement, Metaphysics and Imagination – Alex Crowe
Becoming the Dancing – Bettina Neuhaus
Beyond Technique – Polly Hudson
Attending to Details of Difference – Julie Nathanielsz
Manifesting Dance – Lizzy Le Quesne
Principles in Practice – Wilhemeena Isabella Monroe 
Small Steps and Occasional Leaps – Julie Ludwick
Half Century of Releasing – Jodi Blackburn-Roehl
Listening into Clarity – Lily Kiara
Dancing Inside Out – Gaby Agis
A Journey towards Poetic Materiality – Sally E. Dean
All These Strings in One Hand – Meaghen Buckley
From a Ripple Comes a Wave – Julia Sasso
Adapting SRT for adults with learning disabilities – Sophie Alder 
Mastery and Insignificance – Ruth Gibson
Dancing the World with An Ethical Compass – Manny Emslie
Landscape, Process, Being – Mary-Clare McKenna
Greek Tragedy Meets Skinner Releasing Technique – Lionel Popkin
My Time with Joan – Theresa Moriarty
Glossary ~ References 
“This is the story of an artist cultivating a way to live in harmony with the adaptive wisdom of the body’s imagination. It offers a long-awaited window into the seminal somatic approach to learning, dancing, and being of artist and educator Joan Skinner. Through the words of her long-term students, we have a rare front seat to the emergence and specificity of her pedagogy—rooted in physiology, Eastern philosophy, and observation of the natural world. As an excavation of one thread of the revolutionary re-imagining of the training of dancers in Western culture through
the last half-century, this book is a treasure.”
Lisa Nelson ~ Dance Artist and coeditor: Contact Quarterly dance journal

“Like Skinner Releasing Technique itself, the writings that form this collection are gentle yet robust, open yet complex. Speaking from lived experience the authors richly illuminate SRT, giving insights to the underlying principles and pedagogy of this influential practice. A generous gift to somatic practitioners, releasers, artists and teachers.”
Prof. Vida L. Midgelow, Dance and Choreographic Practices, Middlesex University
Editor: The Oxford Handbook of Improvisation in Dance

“Despite the strong influence that Skinner Releasing Technique has had on a broad community of dancers, non-dancers, teachers, and body-based art-makers across the globe, there has been a dearth of literature on the subject until now. This collection of personal essays by key figures in the evolution of the work provides rich perspectives and insight into this powerful and inspiring approach to dancing, the body, and the imagination.”
DD Dorvillier, Dancer, Choreographer and Teacher