Becoming a Compassionate Planetary Activist with Stephanie Skura

April 18 – 20, 2025 

Friday: 17h30 – 20h30
Saturday & Sunday  (includes 30 min lunch break)

“One of the most memorable dance educators I’ve studied with. She allows you to unfold in ways that are innate yet unknown to you.” Laura Reichhart, Choreographer

 Workshop Description

*The workshop will be given primarily in English with French translation as necessary.

All are welcome — whether new to Open Source Forms (OSF) or experienced practitioners, whether having had dance training or not. We’ll navigate Introductory level OSF, with options for more experienced practitioners. And lots of juicy improvisational processes, refined by Skura over four decades of teaching & choreographic practice, and refreshed continually with new ideas & experiments. We’ll Integrate at times, writing, drawing and vocal practice. Uniquely integrating technique and creative process, OSF sessions offer tools to access freedom, specificity & courage in movement, vocal practice, & performance. With time for expansive activity, as well as quiet states below conscious level and conducive to deep healing, OSF involves shedding outer layers, accessing primal energy, agility navigating subconscious realms, and imagery as potent tool for transformation. It’s a practice of ego-dissolved dancing, with a high degree of consciousness without self-consciousness: free of inhibition, accessing intuition, inviting the mind to collaborate. We’ll include some of Skura’s pioneering work with scores, as potent tool for catalyzing structure and content, and for integrating intuitive and analytical faculties.

A key aspect is individual creative empowerment as an instigator of positive change on the planet.

Biography

Stephanie Skura is an award-winning choreographer, director & teacher, and one of the legends of the first generation of post-moderns. She is passionate about creative empowerment of individuals, and committed to collaboration, multidisciplinary art & lifelong experiment. A ‘major American experimentalist‘ & Bessie award-winner, she has researched, performed & taught movement & performance for four decades around the planet. With deep respect for individual diversity & subconscious realms, her current work takes a radical approach to language & voice, continuing investigations of boundaries & intersections of dance, theater, poetry and performance,. Her involvement with permaculture & naturopathy supports her dedication to catalyzing creative process in a holistic & nourishing way.
A recipient of seven Choreographer Fellowships and five dance company grants from the US National Endowment for the Arts & numerous other grants & awards from government, foundations, & corporations, her work has been commissioned by companies, venues & soloists in thrity-two of the United States and fourteen countries. She holds a BFA & MFA in Dance from New York University Tisch School of the Arts, & instigated Open Source Forms Teacher Certification Program in 2008.

Stephanie is the only still-practicing teacher on the planet who worked closely alongside Skinner Releasing Technique (SRT) creator Joan Skinner. She developed OPEN SOURCE FORMS (OSF) after twelve years as core Skinner Releasing faculty and teacher-trainer, & decades of radical performance practice. Taking time for depth of technique to catalyze creative work, OSF sessions offer tools to access freedom, specificity & courage in movement, vocal practice, & performance. These days, Skura considers her work as ‘compassionate planetary activism’ and is grateful to be part of a community dedicated to creative empowerment as instigator of positive change on the planet.

Skura’s non-fiction and poetic writings have appeared in numerous magazines and newspapers, as well as the books Skinner Releasing Technique, a Movement and Dance Practice; and