A New Kind of Letting Go

Somewhere along the line in modern dance history, dancers must have started holding onto something too tightly, because these days there’s a whole lot of talk about releasing going on--releasing muscles, joints, tension and old patterns, even releasing your “inner dancer,” whatever that might be.

Dancers are flocking to classes in a number of “body therapies” or holistic systems that explore different ways of moving effortlessly and efficiently. Many of them started as a response to performance strain and injury. But now “release technique” has begun to fuel an aesthetic shift that could be the next great swerve for modern and postmodern dance.

No one claims to be dancing release technique, although the phrase “release work” is often used as a short form for choreography affected by the trend. Trisha Brown, one of the prominent dance makers coming out of the 1960s postmodern revolution, is identified with release but doesn’t particularly claim it.

“I have no idea what release technique is. My body moves the way it moves,” she said recently in Movement Research Performance Journal.

Others talked about release as spiritual (“It’s a way of being in the world”) or scientific (“A habit is a neurological pathway”).

What’s it look like? Attempts to describe it can get reductive: “Trisha-Brown-kind-of-floppy dance” is one of them. Or it’s been called “wet noodle” movement or “spaghetti style,” though everyone agrees that pasta metaphors tend not to capture the inventive rigor and strength that enliven the best examples of release-oriented dance.

Where it comes from is easier to define: Alexander Technique (which influenced Brown) and Bartenieff Fundamentals may be two of the oldest of the therapies whose alignment, posture and breathing exercises strive to make the body work better. Others include the Feldenkrais Method, Klein Technique, Skinner Releasing, and Body-Mind Centering. And there are those who think yoga, tai chi and the “let yourself be free” 1960s have also contributed to the mix.

However hard it is to pin down the technique in a dictionary entry, you can spot its effects in action: “Released” dancers tend to look deliriously relaxed while still vibrant, and the choreography doesn’t seem to fit into a familiar dance vocabulary--instead, it’s often a quirky and eclectic compilation. The dancers are not so much interested in making shapes (as in ballet or the Indian classical dance bharata natyam, for instance), but in momentum that arises from an inner impulse. They let movement flow from limb to limb or travel through a flexible spine, upward and downward like the rhythm of unforced breathing.

If you’ve seen dreamy launches and gentle rebounding, buoyant whipping, whirling, dissolving and drifting--sometimes upside down--as if bodies were being swept along on variable breezes, chances are, those dancers have been released.

*

It’s possible to point to a handful of choreographers connected to the trend. In New York, in addition to Brown, are Stephen Petronio and Neil Greenberg. They, in turn, are probably indebted to early pioneers in release concepts, such as Doris Humphrey, Jose Limon and Erick Hawkins--and even the original tension-buster, Isadora Duncan.

Closer to home, you can see release influences in the work of Stephanie Gilliland (Tongue), Laura Gorenstein Miller (Helios Dance Theater), David Rousseve (Reality) and Ilaan Egeland’s newly formed company, (ie)dance. But an informal poll of choreographers whose work appears in the upcoming Dance Kaleidoscope festival indicates that release is still relatively new in town and is making its way into the local scene in idiosyncratic ways.

“Ten years ago, when I first came to L.A. after being in New York, release wasn’t taught or talked about,” says dancer-choreographer Shel Wagner, who became familiar with release concepts mostly through dance classes on the East Coast. “I looked in a dance studio here and saw someone standing at the barre demonstrating, circling her arm in a really rigid way and saying, ‘Release and come UP, release and come UP.’ But her body was so stiff, she wasn’t releasing at all. I had to laugh--OK, that’s release technique in Los Angeles.”

Wagner, who will perform a duet with Stefan Fabry on Saturday at Kaleidoscope, specializes in contact improvisation, a form that shares many principles with release work--especially being flexibly “in the moment” and having a fluid sense of weight and flow. “If someone can see release technique in my performance, it’s because it’s so ingrained in me,” she says. “You see it when people are free in their joints, not moving from position to position but flowing through space.”

But, she says, “here’s the deal in L.A. It’s like a New Age mecca, and on the healing front there’s a lot of release work going on. But I haven’t seen it in the dance world, or maybe there’s one class that’s very New Agey, with drums and finding your inner mover. It’s not geared toward performance at all.”

Wagner points to Gilliland as an exception. “When you watch Stephanie move, you can see her limbs swinging from her joints,” Wagner says. “She’s in control but it’s very fluid, and the dancers in her company seem to be learning her style of movement.”

Gilliland is a good example of the ways trends travel and are adapted in various contexts. She first studied dance in Southern California--ballet and the modern dance techniques of local choreographic lights Lester Horton and Bella Lewitzky (“our roots here,” as she says). But when it came to the latest innovations in major dance centers like New York, Gilliland felt slightly out of it. After some workshops in Alexander and Feldenkrais, and especially after taking classes in Klein Technique in New York, she says, “it was startling, like having a whole new body.

“The first time somebody said ‘move from your bones’ to me, my reaction was, ‘That’s impossible.’ But now, I absolutely get it. You’re moving from the skeleton, and the muscles that need to respond will.”

Gilliland thinks that the more you see released-oriented choreography, the more you can appreciate its nuanced virtuosity. “But if it’s what I call watered-down release work--from someone who hasn’t developed a distinctive voice,” she warns, “you’ll get people rolling around on the floor or whatever. That’s when it’s about [only] release and not choreography. Release is just a tool, and when it’s used well, it puts you in a whole different league of invention.”

Gilliland, who will be doing a new solo in Kaleidoscope, has incorporated release notions into her own method of working, which includes some influence from her previous modern dance training as well as yoga. Release work, she says, has made dance available to a greater range of human bodies--not just ones that can fit into preexisting techniques. “But I think this isn’t the era of release,” she says, “as much as it’s the era of eclecticism.”

*

Parijat Desai, whose trio “Rewired” is on another Kaleidoscope program, agrees that Los Angeles is “not much of a release town.” But she thinks that’s changing. Her initial dance training was in bharata natyam, then some modern and jazz, and it wasn’t until she was dealing with injuries that she discovered body therapies. She then encountered dance classes that used release principles at UCLA, where she’s completing a master’s degree in the world arts and cultures department.

“I had to reexamine how I was using my body,” she says. “I was really tensing up to dance, so release was really about unlearning a lot.”

In Indian classical dance, she explains, as in ballet, you usually learn by imitating ideal positions--hands and head held just so, feet turned out at precise angles. Pursuing those shapes can lead to distortion if your body doesn’t easily fit into them. The mechanics and alignment emphasis that are characteristic in a lot of release-based systems gave her a better sense of how to move without straining.

In release-influenced dance classes, she says, “there’s a lot of mental imagery. Like when you lie in an X on the floor and peel your body off the ground, starting from the hand--focusing on what happens and how the action moves through the skeletal system. You energize only certain points of the body and allow the movement to travel through.”

According to Desai, a teacher might say “release that which is held captive,” but generally there are more specific directives: “Move from your bones,” “drop your tailbone,” “feel the heel-tail connection” or “lead with the crown of your head.”

She finds that the training has affected her approach even when it comes to working within the stricter rules of bharata natyam. “I don’t know if it shows to anyone else,” she says, “but it helps me understand what the most efficient way is to hold the positions clearly without straining or gripping.”

In her contemporary choreography, Desai says she uses release principles, but her Kaleidoscope piece, influenced by classical and modern dance combined with some elements of yoga, won’t look typical. “I’m trying to generate a dynamic and sharp vocabulary, and it didn’t really call for something relaxed. Actually, I’m more interested in clean, clear lines and precision of shape. But you can see a general fluidity--not maybe the brittle movement or fierce attack of some earlier modern dance.”

Cindera Che, another choreographer who grew up training in non-Western dance--in her case traditional Chinese dance in Taiwan--has only recently seen the work of dance makers who look released in the new way. The piece she’s doing Saturday, called “Ma,” was made before that exposure and uses balletic movement for a mother character and street-style popping for a boy.

“I wanted to tell a story, so I used this contrast,” she says. “And I have to say, that piece represents my controlling nature--wanting to sculpt something. But in a later piece I got frustrated and decided just to let go and move and see what comes up. I feel like it’s more natural, and it’s more encompassing of the audience. I’m more affected by release movement when I see it, and I guess I would sacrifice the visual shape to open myself up to the emotional impact.”

*

As with any movement that makes converts, there are those who worry about how far the pendulum will swing.

“I’m not a great fan of what’s called release technique,” says Jeff Slayton, who comes from an older generation of modern dancers and who danced with Merce Cunningham and Viola Farber (whom he married). Slayton’s piece on Friday’s Kaleidoscope program uses film footage of Farber in a kind of tribute. “Release wasn’t around when I was a young dancer, although I think Viola’s loose-limbed style has something in common with it,” he says. “But now release has become a fad almost. I see the same movements over and over.

“I’m old-fashioned enough that I want a dance to be about something--not necessarily a story, but to have some focus. And a lot of release-technique dances to me are about moving all the time without a central idea. I think the pendulum is going to swing back. There will be this wonderful compromise and joining of release and other techniques.”

Dancer and choreographer Tina Croll will co-direct a reprise of “The Horse’s Mouth” at this year’s Kaleidoscope. Last year, the danced “oral history” was the hit of the festival. Now expanded into a full evening event, performers from different traditions will improvise with one another and tell stories about their careers. Croll says that a variety of styles show up--including flowing, released dancing. In general though, she recognizes, a gradual shift into released gear.

“I think the whole trend now, the look of dancers, is more loose and fluid,” Croll says. “They don’t have that wonderful weight of some of the early modern dancers--I think in some ways it’s a reaction to the very bound, contracted style of [Martha] Graham. Bodies are so different, so people started working in more individual ways.”

But now, Croll says, “everything’s meditative, smooth and continuous, like tai chi, and it can look bland and lack a point of view. If you just try to go with the flow and see what happens, you can get stuck in one area and not use the range of dynamics available.” She misses a certain solid, focused presence--the “alert, pulled-together concentration” that Cunningham still has.

“There was a certain power and weight in that,” she says. “You almost can’t get it now. When people do reconstructions of that older work, it’s not understood physically.”

*

But you can’t really blame bland dances on release work, since bad choreography occurs in every genre. And when nobody will say exactly what release work is, it’s hard to universally condemn or praise it. Some dance writers have seen its principles at work in tap, flamenco and West African dance. Not to mention seeing its ideals--the unforced, connected, vibrant sense of momentum--in dancers who’ve never heard of it, like Fred Astaire and the Nicholas Brothers. Or Mikhail Baryshnikov, who has heard of it but has never taken a release technique class. (He says he suspects there’s some kind of similar releasing done in ballet’s aerial moves.)

Desai confirms that there is nothing new under the sun: “It’s funny--having done jazz and African dance, I could see that it’s not like people haven’t done it before--that kind of releasing and sequencing of joints, rippling through the spine. Some of the release movement today looks familiar. It’s partly just a different way of thinking about it, or a different impetus that leads to similar movement.”

And partly, of course, it’s a new kind of moving that hasn’t yet been fully released into dance history.

*

Dance Kaleidoscope 2000, Friday-Saturday, Luckman Fine Arts Complex, Cal State L.A., 8 p.m.; July 22, “The Horse’s Mouth Greets the New Millennium,” Japan America Theatre, 8 p.m.; and July 23, a mixed program at John Anson Ford Amphitheatre, 7:30 p.m. $12, $18. (323) 343-6683.