Dance

La technique du relâchement is what English calls release technique, and French did not borrow the term: it translated it, with a noun that carries a judgement the English one does not. In ordinary French, le relâchement is slackness — un relâchement de la discipline, un relâchement de l’attention — so the studio has named a deliberate skill with the word for having let things slip. The verb behind it is broad: relâcher is to loosen a rope, and it is also to set a hostage free. What is worth carrying away, though, is the short form of the noun, because it lives on doors. A theatre that is dark tonight posts a single word, relâche, and le théâtre fait relâche le lundi says it is closed on Mondays — anyone reading a season’s calendar meets this before meeting anything else. Then put sans in front of it and the sense turns over: travailler sans relâche is to work without let-up, relentlessly. One root, and English needs « release », « dark » and « relentless » to cover the ground it stands on.