FALL/WINTER 1999
Editors: Sarah Michelson, Trajal Harrell and DD Dorvillier
Release, what is it, what are the assumptions we all make about it, a physical practice, a spiritual practice, a technique, an aesthetic, are we all doing it, are none of us doing it… do any two people mean the same thing when they use this word, can it be defined, is it an abstract concept or an anatomical actuality, is it all in the mind, is it a sign of the times… does it connect you or make you more lonely or both, are we hanging on too tight to one idea by even making this journal in the first place… does it translate into other languages… well, does it? Or should it always be described in English… does this depend on what I mean? Well, I mean release, but what aspect, what kind, from which school of thought, from whose body perspective? Do you understand me, how much do we care that we’re right about what it is… how much can we let go of… who are we?
–Sarah Michelson
As a 1997 Movement Research artist-in-residence, I began my residency thinking I could do a comparative pedagogical analysis between the Russian and French classical schools, the Indian classical schools, and the American moderns. Although this was obviously too large I could not see the forest for the trees. In my immediate vicinity, everyone seemed to be about “release”, yet there was no consolidated body of information on what seemed to me to be the most prevalent concept in contemporary dance. It is our hope that MR Performance Journals #18 and #19 will change this fact. There is also good news that Mary Fulekerson will soon be publishing a book on release and Contact Quarterly continues to be a great source for articles and information within the field. Nonetheless, previous to this journal, a consolidated text was noticeably absent. We, therefore, hope these journals are handy and useful springboards for dancers, choreographers, teachers, students, audiences, presenters, and critics.
The writers here and those to come in PJ#19 have created and exciting conversation full of contradictions, and convergence. When I approached Anya Pryor, former Associate Director of Movement Research, to propose release as a journal topic, I was coming as a resident artist with a question – “What is release?” As the journal process ensued, that question seemed to be as ubiquitous as release itself, or as co-editor DD Dorvillier expressed “the emperor’s new clothes” (see drawings on page 10). Continually asking this question and working with the writers, and Sarah and DD has been an important part of my dance education and the glissade of my residency. I certainly now see release as an integration of the western kinesthetic intellect with eastern principles and our musical intelligences with southern hemispheric principles. It is important, however, to recognize that exclusive regional paradigms would be overdeterministic and deservingly short-sighted. I can best now generally describe release as a dialectic within the [dancing] body. This dialectic inherent to every human’s corporearlity and the limitations, there of, is nonetheless mirrored by historical discourses—this journal and my opinion being a manifestation of our contemporary discussion.
Finally, I want to thank Wendy Perron and Irene Dowd whose insights and help were instrumental in contacting writers and steering my editorialship towards greater depth.
–Trajal Harrell
I would like to think of the “release community” as a loosely related group of techniques that share a focus on strengthening the dancer’s connection to her/his body in motion through time and space by stressing the reverberative aspects of the inward focus, poetic and/or anatomical imagery that engages the dancer creatively, thus enriching movement and performance quality and a study of gravity its limitations, and benefits.
I brought to the journal my own biases and history with the word “release”. I left feeling a little sad for the word itself. How could an innocent word with such a simple meaning become the signpost for such a huge technical and aesthetic trend?
In the past decade, techniques which had been cooking for ten, twenty, thirty years (such as the work of Joan Skinner, Mary Fulkerson, Nancy Topf, Susan Klein, among many others) have taken on progressively more formal shapes, such as the creation of teacher certification programs, the codification of pedagogy, even the trademarking of nomenclatures.
With the outgrowth and increase in demand for these techniques there seems also to have arisen a need to classify them under a broader aesthetic wing. How do these distinct and individual approaches to movement training come to acquire their peg as “release technique”?
Because of the tremendous response to this issue we decided that we needed the space of two journals to properly cover all that was necessary (or at least begin to). So, in addition to the fascinating articles we have in store for you in our first installment of the release issue, Journal #18, Journal #19 promises equally enlightening pieces, such as an in-depth view into Alexander Technique by Colorado choreographer Christy Harris, a history by Diane Torr of the circular relationships of her Drag King work, Aikido and “release technique”, as well as writing on the work of Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen by Vera Orlock. So stay tuned as you settle into our first installment of this great and paradoxical Release Issue. Enjoy!
–DD Dorvillier
