Familiarity & Transformation in Practice and Performance
9-16 August 2026 | Sunday – Sunday (8 days) | 10:30-17:00 | Amsterdam, NL
‘I don’t know, but I know it in the unknown.’
– Pak Suprapto Suryodarmo
Lily Kiara draws from Skinner Releasing Technique (SRT), experiential anatomy & physiology, Biodynamic Craniosacral practice, Joged Amerta Movement (Suprapto Suryodarmo), Songwriting, Poetry, Dance Improvisation as live performance, Life.
summer intensive 2025
Can we use and expand what is familiar to us? Allow what is, to allow change? Can we listen beneath what is familiar to us? In our bodies when we practice, in the dances we perform. Aligning ourselves with what we may know and what we don’t know. To keep our perceptions alive. To connect to something larger than ourselves. To expand our sense of reality and our sense of what the dances may need (to be). Familiarity as a stepping stone and resource for possible transformation. The difference between habit and familiarity in our perceptions and dances. The invitation is to listen newly each time.
Listening. Attending to what you hear. For a little while or in the swiftness of it passing in the dance. Is it familiar to you? May it point to something new or different? Or is it new? What is it? Can the dance itself respond to these questions? There are layers of listening. Some support our individual technical practice and others tune us to sharing and performing. Deep listening is the practice of hearing multiple things simultaneously. This is what we do when we dance, when we improvise. Listening in action. Fine tuning.
Allowing the presence of our surroundings to affect our sensory experience and (in-)form our dances. To support this, some days we may (partly) work outside and then bring this practice into the studio to allow it to inform our dances. We are part of something larger than ourselves. This is part of our dance. Letting our senses be in touch with outside environment directly strengthens the connections. Connectivity. In this work I’ve been greatly influenced by the practice with Suprapto Suryodarmo in Indonesia.
What are the dances we make in this time, the stories, the poems, the imagination, spaces, musicality, relationship? Soft. Fierce. Wild. Subtle. Liberate. Invitations and (new) availabilities to deepening or to new experiences and perspectives.
court yard 2025
Nuances and awareness of more subtle layers of our dancing bodies can influence our presence and the availability to the timing and form of our dances. We’ll tune into this through imagery and practices related to (a.o.) Skinner Releasing Technique beyond the Introductory material. This has become an important part of offering these Summer Intensives. I’ve been developing images and practices deriving from SRT during my own practice of almost 30 years in this technique, deepening and expanding them into areas of my artistic interest and my interest of offering a sense of further possibilities. I will also be training in Joan Skinner’s Ongoing SRT teacher training earlier this year, then being able to offer this particular material Joan had designed. Some of this may finds it way into the Summer Intensive.
One day in this week we’ll set up the day alternatively, to support ourselves throughout the continuity of 8 days. This could mean starting later or ending earlier, working in silence and/or outside. It will probably be the 5th day (Thursday). A proposition will be offered when we’ve started practicing together.
“And it is the knowledge of the bigger story that is going to carry us through. It can give us the courage, it can give us the strength, it can give us the hilarity to dance our people into a world of sanity. Let us remember it together.”
– Joanna Macy, in: Our Life as Gaia, in: Thinking like a Mountain
images of the summer intensive 2025
Skinner Releasing Technique (SRT) supports the coming together of dance technique and the creative process simultaneously through the use of imagery, designed to enhance expansion and strength with efficiency and ease. Through practicing within different layers of consciousness, from eyes closed deeper in oneself (deeper imagery), in direct relation to space (movement studies), or in touch with another person (hands-on partner graphics), we can have different felt senses of moving and being moved. Tuning in and expanding. Practicing integrating inner and outer.
We’ll be making connections throughout the whole workshop between how we experience different principles in the dancing self and how we make dances. Listening to ourselves and listening to what is being made. Being moved and making move. Skills and embodying practices, using images. Then using the imagination to tune into the dances themselves coming into form.
Making dances. This. Here. Now. This now is expansive and layered. What can we read and play with in the dances we make? Listening both concentrated and not concentrated simultaneously. Creating dances in the moment. What is the dance asking of you now? Can you listen to what this is and know it instantly through the dancing self? This also offers the possibility of ease: this moment contains and can reveal everything you need to know right now. Context supports this intuitive knowing and being with it. We practice technically and compositionally so there is an ability, availability and readiness in this moment, in the body and in reading the composition as it unfolds and is being created. We include the practise and generosity of witnessing, watching and being watched, seeing and being seen. How does being seen support and affect our dance?
Biodynamic Craniosacral therapy is a gentle form of bodywork that originates from Osteopathic practice. It orientates to the Health and Intelligence of the body always being present in the client. Connecting with the more subtle layers in the self, ‘dynamic stillness’, ‘listening’ and ‘allowing’ are aspects of its orientation that resonate with approaches in SRT. The important role of presence is an example of its relevant relation to the practice of Improvisation.
Amerta Movement
You can read some about the work with Suprapto Suryodarmo in Indonesia and find links on this page.
Lily Kiara danced her first improvised performance on invitation of her dance teacher at the age of eight. She started her professional training at the School for New Dance Development in Amsterdam (1990-1994), at Bennington College and Movement Research in NYC. Further on, Skinner Releasing Technique (certified teacher since 2001), martial arts and training in instant composition with teachers such as Julyen Hamilton and Lisa Nelson have greatly influenced her work and evolving vision. The work of her late teacher Suprapto Suryodarmo, Joged Amerta, with whom she’s been practicing and performing in Indonesia, continues to inspire her on numerous levels. She has been making work for over 30 years.
Lily also is active as a folk singer-songwriter, solo and with her bands The RIVER and The Tall Tales. She released several CDs and EPs on her own label Sibyl Sings and since 2016 on Zip Records.
Lily Kiara has been offering classes and workshops in Skinner Releasing Technique and Creating Dances (Improvisation), sometimes together with a musician or lighting designer. She has been teaching at independent studios, festivals, academies and art institutions throughout Europe, USA, Australia and Indonesia and also guides artists in their process of making their own work.
Since graduating in 2021 in London, she has been working as a Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapist.
You can wander through the website for further information and inspiration.
group Summer Intensive 2025
‘If you want to find your voice, you have to listen for it.’
-Margaret Atwood
FOR WHOM:
The Summer Intensive is being offered for the 24th year in 2026 and is intended for more experienced dancers, movers, choreographers, mimers, actors, musicians etc. so we can (also) deepen and develop the work in the artistic field. Experience can mean different things. Theatre director Peter Brook wrote about ‘skill and heart’ in relation to experience. It’s important here to have some (inner) awareness of your own moving body/self and that you’re able and willing during some parts of the classes to spend time dancing with an image or practice without continuous guidance. If you are not sure but wish to join, please contact me through email. As it is an Intensive, it is not possible to come for single days.
WHEN:
9-16 August 2026 | Sunday – Sunday (8 days) | 10:30-17:00
COST:
€450
WHERE:
BAU Studio | large studio (directions below)
Entrepotdok 4
1018 AD Amsterdam
The Netherlands
ORGANISATION:
If you wish to join, please send an email. Deadline for signing up is Sunday 27 July. It is helpful if you confirm in time by payment or by staying in touch about it, otherwise you may loose your place or the workshop might be cancelled because i don’t know in time who is coming. If you are interested, please register in time and be clear about your participation and registration. It helps these independently set up workshops to be possible. It is very much appreciated! Thank you! Priority is given to participants who commit to coming for the whole workshop. Please send me a few lines about your previous experience. Details for further registration you can find below.
REGISTRATION:
To make your registration complete, you can please transfer €450 to the account below (incl. btw). If you cancel up until 10 days before the workshop, €75 administration costs will be kept. If you cancel after that, there can be no refund. You will receive an invoice soon after your payment. If the workshop is cancelled, you will get the full amount return. If you need other ways of payment, please let me know. If you just communicate about it in time, it is usually fine.
Account (please note the different name!):
Account name: A.M. Venendaal, Amsterdam, NL
IBAN: NL47 INGB 000 349 1465
BIC: INGBNL2A
LOCATION:
BAU Studio (large studio)
Entrepotdok 4
1018 AD Amsterdam
From Amsterdam CS a 15 minute walk or bus 22 in direction of Indische Buurt. Out at Kadijksplein (2nd stop). Walk underneath the arch with ‘Entrepot-Dok’ on it. The building is then on the left.
BAU studio and Lily Kiara are not to be held responsible for any physical injury or damage or loss of possessions during the workshop.
If you wish to be on my mailinglist for dance workshops, please send a message in e-mail.
You can also connect to this facebook page for dance workshops and classes
Thank you for your interest! Feel free to contact me if there might be any questions.
photo of a drawing made during SRT workshop at @tictacartcentre, Brussels
by (left) Siebe Cooreman and (right) Apolline Borne