Tribute to Steve Paxton
Steve Paxton during performance with Grand Union, Walker Art Center Auditorium, 1975, ph Boyd Hagen
For fifty-five years, Steve Paxton has explored the fiction of “cultivated” dance and the “truth” of improvisation.
Born in Phoenix, Arizona, in 1939, he began his exploration of movement through gymnastics before training in modern dance, then in ballet, yoga, aikido, and tai chi chuan. During the summer of 1958, he took part in the American Dance Festival at Connecticut College, where he studied under choreographers Merce Cunningham and José Limón. Shortly afterward, he settled in New York. He danced with the José Limón Company in 1959 and with the Merce Cunningham Dance Company from 1961 to 1964. He began practicing aikido in 1964 at the Hombu Dojo in Tokyo and continued his training in New York under Yamada Sensei.
Motivated by a taste for deconstruction, exploration, subversion, and invention, he became a founding member of the Judson Dance Theater (1962–1966), which grew out of workshops led by composer Robert Dunn, himself inspired by John Cage’s methods. Steve Paxton’s experimental partners included Yvonne Rainer, Trisha Brown, Robert Rauschenberg, and Lucinda Childs, among others. The Judson movement would go on to influence the emergence of contemporary dance at various times and in many places around the world.
In the 1960s, Steve Paxton turned to everyday, prosaic movement to create early and singular works such as Flat (1964), Satisfyin Lover (1967), and State (1968). Aligned with his interest in science and technology, Paxton participated in Nine Evenings: Theater and Engineering in 1966—an initiative by Billy Klüver, an engineer from Bell Laboratories, in collaboration with Robert Rauschenberg. He was also a founding member of the Grand Union (1970–1976), an improvisation collective that brought together several choreographers from the early Judson Dance Theater, including Yvonne Rainer, David Gordon, Trisha Brown, as well as Douglas Dunn, Lincoln Scott, Barbara Dilley, and Becky Arnold.
In 1972, Steve Paxton originated Contact Improvisation, which proposed physical principles for movement between bodies in contact: fluidity in giving and receiving weight, initiative, reflexes, and innate physical empathy.
Contact Improvisation developed into an international network of dancers who gather to practice and also to publish information and essays in the dance and improvisation journal Contact Quarterly, to which Paxton has contributed as both author and editor since 1975. In 1986, together with Anne Kilcoyne in England, he founded Touchdown Dance, an organization offering visually impaired people the opportunity to dance.
In 1986, he began his research on Material for the Spine. In MFS—which grew out of his observations of Contact Improvisation—the spine becomes an essential “limb” of the body. It is a technical and meditative study of the movement potential of the pelvis and spine.
In 2008, Steve Paxton created an interactive digital publication of the same name, Material for the Spine, with Éditions Contredanse in Brussels, which he later expanded into exhibitions and installations: Phantom Exhibition, presented in Belgium, Portugal, and Japan, and Weight of Sensation at MoMA in New York.
Steve Paxton has maintained a long-term collaboration with dancer Lisa Nelson — PA RT (beginning in 1979) and Night Stand (since 2004).
In 2016, he toured with a revival of Bound (1982) and choreographed the staging of Robert Ashley’s opera Quicksand in New York.
In 2018, still with Éditions Contredanse, he published his first book, Gravity, later translated into French as La gravité. This edition was also released as an audiobook in mp3 format and as a collector’s vinyl record.
In 2019, a major exhibition dedicated to him, Drafting Interior Techniques, was held in Lisbon.
In 2020, an online publication, Conversations in Vermont, hosted an extensive collection of interviews with him and Lisa Nelson.
Born in Phoenix, Arizona, in 1939, he began his exploration of movement through gymnastics before training in modern dance, then in ballet, yoga, aikido, and tai chi chuan. During the summer of 1958, he took part in the American Dance Festival at Connecticut College, where he studied under choreographers Merce Cunningham and José Limón. Shortly afterward, he settled in New York. He danced with the José Limón Company in 1959 and with the Merce Cunningham Dance Company from 1961 to 1964. He began practicing aikido in 1964 at the Hombu Dojo in Tokyo and continued his training in New York under Yamada Sensei.
Motivated by a taste for deconstruction, exploration, subversion, and invention, he became a founding member of the Judson Dance Theater (1962–1966), which grew out of workshops led by composer Robert Dunn, himself inspired by John Cage’s methods. Steve Paxton’s experimental partners included Yvonne Rainer, Trisha Brown, Robert Rauschenberg, and Lucinda Childs, among others. The Judson movement would go on to influence the emergence of contemporary dance at various times and in many places around the world.
In the 1960s, Steve Paxton turned to everyday, prosaic movement to create early and singular works such as Flat (1964), Satisfyin Lover (1967), and State (1968). Aligned with his interest in science and technology, Paxton participated in Nine Evenings: Theater and Engineering in 1966—an initiative by Billy Klüver, an engineer from Bell Laboratories, in collaboration with Robert Rauschenberg. He was also a founding member of the Grand Union (1970–1976), an improvisation collective that brought together several choreographers from the early Judson Dance Theater, including Yvonne Rainer, David Gordon, Trisha Brown, as well as Douglas Dunn, Lincoln Scott, Barbara Dilley, and Becky Arnold.
In 1972, Steve Paxton originated Contact Improvisation, which proposed physical principles for movement between bodies in contact: fluidity in giving and receiving weight, initiative, reflexes, and innate physical empathy.
Contact Improvisation developed into an international network of dancers who gather to practice and also to publish information and essays in the dance and improvisation journal Contact Quarterly, to which Paxton has contributed as both author and editor since 1975. In 1986, together with Anne Kilcoyne in England, he founded Touchdown Dance, an organization offering visually impaired people the opportunity to dance.
In 1986, he began his research on Material for the Spine. In MFS—which grew out of his observations of Contact Improvisation—the spine becomes an essential “limb” of the body. It is a technical and meditative study of the movement potential of the pelvis and spine.
In 2008, Steve Paxton created an interactive digital publication of the same name, Material for the Spine, with Éditions Contredanse in Brussels, which he later expanded into exhibitions and installations: Phantom Exhibition, presented in Belgium, Portugal, and Japan, and Weight of Sensation at MoMA in New York.
Steve Paxton has maintained a long-term collaboration with dancer Lisa Nelson — PA RT (beginning in 1979) and Night Stand (since 2004).
In 2016, he toured with a revival of Bound (1982) and choreographed the staging of Robert Ashley’s opera Quicksand in New York.
In 2018, still with Éditions Contredanse, he published his first book, Gravity, later translated into French as La gravité. This edition was also released as an audiobook in mp3 format and as a collector’s vinyl record.
In 2019, a major exhibition dedicated to him, Drafting Interior Techniques, was held in Lisbon.
In 2020, an online publication, Conversations in Vermont, hosted an extensive collection of interviews with him and Lisa Nelson.