Nancy Topf, John Rolland, and Masha Paludan created the Vermont Movement Workshop (1974–85), which became a teaching laboratory for their ideas. Over a period of thirty years, Topf developed her own approach based on Release called Topf Technique ™ and Dynamic Anatomy, certified by ISMETA (International Somatic Movement Education and Therapy Association). Topf’s work can be experienced in private hands-on bodywork sessions or in improvised movement classes that incorporate the hands-on work. Her therapeutic work was influenced by the ideas of Wilhelm Reich and personal experience with Co-counseling, as well as Buddhist studies through Naropa Institute and later with Gelek Rimpoche.

Topf studied Dalcroze Eurhythmics as a child, and dance at the Martha Graham School as a teen, and with Margaret H’Doubler in the dance program at the University of Wisconsin. On graduating, she moved to NYC and trained with José Limón and at the Merce Cunningham Studio as well as with Anna Halprin. She danced professionally with Viola Farber and Katherine Litz, to name a few. Topf was drawn to the technical aspects of dance training and was teaching Cunningham Technique at the University of Illinois, where she met her collabora- tors in Release.

Besides teaching her own work in the U.S. at such schools as the Laban/Bartenieff Institute of Movement Studies and Movement Research in NYC, she taught at Dartington College of the Arts in the UK; the School for New Dance Development in Amsterdam; Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes in Mexico; and dance studios in Geneva and Stock- holm. She also choreographed and performed— sometimes with her husband, Jon Gibson, a com- poser and multi-instrumentalist. At the time of her death in 1998, in the Swissair 111 crash, Topf had recently completed the first draft of an introduction to Topf Technique called The Anatomy of Center. Later The Anatomy of Center – An introduction to the practice of Topf Technique® and Dynamic Anatomy is edited by Melinda Buckwalter and published by Contact Quarterly Editions, and translated into French by Aude Fondard at Contredanse Editions L’anatomie du centre – Une introduction à la pratique de la Topf Technique ™ and Dynamic Anatomy.