science

Skinner Releasing Technique

Skinner Releasing Technique is a science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Skinner Releasing Technique rather than just read about it. In short: Skinner Releasing Technique (SRT) created by Joan Skinner is practised and taught worldwide. Emslie, M.A.

Key takeaways

Skinner Releasing Technique belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Skinner Releasing Technique to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Skinner Releasing Technique from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Skinner Releasing Technique (SRT) created by Joan Skinner is practised and taught worldwide. Emslie, M.A. (2021) describes it as "a somatic movement, dance and creative practice with a core underlying principle of releasing blocked energy, held tension, and habitual patterns of body mind. It enables us to move with greater freedom and ease whilst awakening creativity and spontaneity". "By focusing on personal, kinaesthetic experience of essential principles of movement, SRT may enhance any movement style whilst fostering artistic sensibility and creative unfoldment" SRT is unusual in that technical aspects of moving and dancing, such as posture and alignment are experienced as creative explorations that take form as spontaneous movement. Technical and creative aspects of practice are indistinguishable. Joan Skinner created an Introductory Level of SRT, as well as an Ongoing Level and there is a children's pedagogy in existence. The introductory Level consists of 15 classes and the Ongoing Level is that of 12 classes. The Ongoing classes allow participants to slip deeper in to practice and they are more spacious than the introductory Level classes. There is also an Advanced Level. Skinner described the shift from Ongoing Level to Advanced Level as being "'when things start dissolving ... there is only consciousness left". Whatever the level of classes, the pedagogies consist of key activities that are, Checklists, Image Actions, Partner Graphics, Partner Dances/Partner Movement Studies, Movement Studies (with an image) and Totalities.

Releasing and Release Techniques SRT sits beneath the canopy term of Release Techniques and thus is part of a wider Release community. However, Skinner was very clear about differentiating Releasing from Release based practice. The difference she pointed out is that Releasing is ongoing and so we notice and respond to what is arising moment by moment; where as Release Technique is understood to be an aesthetic of the body moving with ease, fluidity, lightness, power and strength. Releasing is the means by which we achieve those qualities.

Joan Skinner

Joan Skinner (1924-2021) was born in Minneapolis (USA) in the early 1920s. As a child she participated in 'interpretive dancing' classes led by Cora Bell Hunter - who had been taught by Mabel Elsworth Todd, author of the book The Thinking Body. Bell Hunter's classes, especially her use of imagery, had a long-lasting effect on Skinner and she later told her students about the classes. On leaving high school in 1942 Skinner gained a scholarship to study theatre, music and dance at Bennington Arts College, Vermont. She met Martha Graham at Bennington College and Graham suggested that Skinner should continue dance study in New York. Once Skinner had graduated from Bennington, she enrolled at The Martha Graham Centre and eventually became a member of the Martha Graham Dance Company in which she danced Appalachian Spring (1944), Dark Meadow (1946), and the premier of Diversion of Angels (1948). After a number of years of teaching at the Martha Graham Centre and performing in the company, she left in 1950. On leaving she became a member of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company. It was during that time that she embarked on practice and research which became Skinner Releasing Technique. Skinner left the Cunningham company in 1953. Shortly afterward she went on a concert tour choreographed by Jerome Robbins and Ray Harrison. She continued to perform and choreograph but a shift in her career happened in the 1960s. From 1961-64 she taught at the University of Illinois, Champaign. From 1964-66 she was artist in Residence at The Walker Arts Centre and Tyrone Guthrie Theatre in Minneapolis after which she returned to the University of Illinois for a year, 1966-1967. It was with her dance students at Illinois that the beginnings of Skinner Releasing were first shared and practiced. Skinner credits her Illinois students as giving her practice the name Releasing. She said "They [the students] just kept saying, we're doing the releasing technique. It must have been because I was saying, Well we're releasing this, we're releasing that". In 1967 she became a full-time staff member at The University of Washington, Seattle. From 1985 she became Head of the Dance Department. She retired in 1987 but continued to teach and develop Skinner Releasing Technique until the early 2000s. She lived in Seattle with her husband, Jim Knapp, a musician.

References

External links Skinner Releasing Technique A Movement and Dance Practice, Triarchy Press Interview with Susan Klein and Joan Skinner Skinner Releasing Institute website

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Skinner Releasing Technique

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Skinner Releasing Technique claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Skinner Releasing Technique before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Skinner Releasing Technique ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Skinner Releasing Technique

In research: Skinner Releasing Technique appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Skinner Releasing Technique in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Skinner Releasing Technique is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Dance education, Dance technique, Learning methods, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Skinner Releasing Technique outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Skinner Releasing Technique in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Skinner Releasing Technique means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Skinner Releasing Technique out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Skinner Releasing Technique in simple terms?

Skinner Releasing Technique (SRT) created by Joan Skinner is practised and taught worldwide. Emslie, M.A.

Why does Skinner Releasing Technique matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Skinner Releasing Technique?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Skinner Releasing Technique.