Amerta movement is a practice developed by Suprapto Suryodarmo, from Java, evolving in conversation with Indonesian and other artists world-wide. Practice can serve as a support for creative work, and/or a time to honor the wild and subtle dances at play in the bodybeing.  It is a process-oriented practice, fostering new possibilities in how we perceive, how we receive, and how we move.  The inner landscape of our bodies can grow in communication with the animated immediacy of our wider world.

Releasing explores the rich, multidimensional dialogue of movement and imagination, specifically poetic imagery. The dancing is fostered in part through partnered work, in which specific touch and subtle movement suggest new kinetic and kinesthetic possibilities - opening, lengthening, widening, tipping, falling, more. Some parts of class are also spent lying on the floor, enjoying support in gravity. Music is woven throughout the classes, lending texture, space, and provocation to the mix. Physical awareness, availability to impulse, and allowing movement to happen are central to this experiential, experimental and process-oriented practice. Class can serve as a support for creative work, or a place simply to honor the wild and subtle dances at play within the body.

This work was developed by Joan Skinner, whose dance career led to sustained injury. She sought a way to work in dance wherein unfoldings of movement may follow the unique logic of our own bodies, gently revealing layers of presence within us. 

Releasing embraces the principle of softening, to find strength. Other principles include letting go of unneeded tensions in support of freedom of movement; internal space as a felt experience of receptivity, inter-being and communication; alignment that is multidirectional and mobile; creative process as inseparable from technical work; poetic images as culturally specific and culture forming, having the power to illicit new movement.  Through the lens of body systems, Releasing is widely understood as an approach that foregrounds the skeletal and fascial systems. However, Releasing can serve as a radical gateway to engaging all of the body systems at once. Further information at Skinner Releasing Network.

Explore full-bodied dancing and rolling; become more sensitive to changing relationships to ground and one another; listen to, read, join, influence and be influenced in specific shared movement; find internal support and centers of gravity; learn to receive weight or support from others and the environment; play with the visual field while seeing from within our constellation. We work for about an hour with principles and light structures/ suggestions for improvising, followed by open time to dance with all that’s cooking.