In this workshop we’ll start every day with Skinner Releasing Technique (SRT). Throughout the whole workshop we can experience directly how principles and practices in SRT (technique) support improvising and making dances in the moment (composition). Subjects that might arise are for example: How may softening and availability affect timing? How may a sense of being in touch with your inner self affect the way you relate to your environment in the dance? How may presence affect clarity and radiance? How may embodied listening influence relationship? Becoming familiar with these practices in the body brings more choices and possibilities and can enhance, enrich or even transform the dances we (tend to) make. What makes up the landscape of the dance; what is here and what happens when we include what’s beyond the immediate landscape? Skinner Releasing Technique (SRT) is a visionary approach to dance and movement training, developed by Joan Skinner (1924-2021); a detailed, refined and expansive technique. It is designed to find greater ease in our dancing and dynamic alignment with our environment and a refined tuning with our bodies and imagination. The teaching strongly draws on guided imagery and hands-on partner studies, supporting an experiential understanding of both the technical and the creative process in movement. There is an ongoing fine tuning in allowing ourselves to consciously fall into unknown creative territories. We allow ourselves to be intimately in touch with our inner body as well as align with something greater than ourselves through embodied listening. As we move with imagery that guides us through different layers of the whole self, the imagery can begin to move us. The poetic imagery can atune to physiological layers and includes the mystery of intangible layers present. Embodied listening, inner spaces, presence, dynamic stillness, softening and allowing are some of the essential areas of practice in Skinner Releasing (other than release), that support action into newness. Softening supports the releasing of strength through efficiency and responsiveness. Allowing encourages listening, to one own dancing first. This way we can become more available. In the technical work and in creating dances, directing and allowing are side by side, as are stillness and action, receptivity and fierceness. Joan Skinner says: “Letting go is a discipline”. It is a continuous practice. Giving in. Not giving up. BIOGRAPHY: Lily Kiara (Amsterdam, NL) | dance artist, facilitator, singer-songwriter “Poetry and stillness are at the heart of my work; poetic embodiment and the depths of stillness, whether working with live musicians or in silence, in group or solo. I’m interested in refinement and layering, in detail of sensation and clarity of action. I love the mystery that’s so clearly part of the dance, while also figuring out how to make some of the intangible tangible in a way that we can actually practise and work through the body with what is beyond the merely physical. I’m interested in revealing what is in the space and stillness being created by the dancer(s) through the dance”. Lily Kiara danced her first improvised solo performance on invitation of her dance teacher at the age of eight. She started her professional training at the School for New Dance Development in Amsterdam (1990-1994), at Bennington College and Movement Research in NYC. Further on, Skinner Releasing Technique (certified teacher since 2001), martial arts and training in instant composition with teachers such as Julyen Hamilton and Lisa Nelson have greatly influenced her work and evolving vision. The work of her late teacher Suprapto Suryodarmo, Joged Amerta Movement with whom she has practiced and performed in Indonesia, continues to inspire her on numerous levels. Since her graduation in London in 2021, she now also works as a Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapist. Lily also is active as a folk singer-songwriter, solo and with her bands The RIVER and The Tall Tales. Lily Kiara has been teaching classes and workshops in Skinner Releasing Technique (certification in 2001) and Creating (Instant) Dances, sometimes together with a musician or lighting designer. She has been teaching at independent studios, companies, festivals, academies and art institutions throughout Europe, USA, Australia and Indonesia and also guides artists in their process of making their own work, tuning into exactly what it is they are making at this moment and what could support them in doing so with their highest potential. www.lilykiara.nl