Steve Paxton

Steve Paxton has researched the fiction of cultured dance and the “truth” of improvisation for 55 years.

Born in Phoenix, Arizona in 1939, he began his movement studies in gymnastics and then trained in modern dance, and later in ballet, yoga, Aikido and Tai Chi Chuan. In summer 1958, Paxton attended the American Dance Festival at Connecticut College, where he trained with choreographers Merce Cunningham and José Limón. Soon after, he moved to New York City. He was a member of the José Limón Company in 1959 and performed with the Merce Cunningham Dance Company from 1961 to 1964. His study of Aikido began in 1964 at Hombu Dojo in Tokyo, continuing in New York City under Yamada Sensei.

Paxton’s appetite for deconstruction, exploration, subversion and invention led him to become a founding member of the Judson Dance Theater (1962-66), which arose from composer Robert Dunn’s workshops, Dunn himself being inspired by John Cage’s methods. Paxton’s partners in experimentation were, to name a few, Yvonne Rainer, Trisha Brown, Robert Rauschenberg and Lucinda Childs. The Judson movement has been influential in the emerging contemporary dance at different times in many countries around the world.

Nadia Benzekri

In the 1960s, Paxton created work from pedestrian, everyday movement, including such intriguing early dances as Flat (1964), Satisfyin Lover (1967) and State (1968). In tune with his interest in science and technology, Paxton participated in Nine Evenings of Theater and Engineering in 1966, initiated by Billy Klüver, an engineer at Bell Labs, in association with Robert Rauschenberg. He was also a founding member of Grand Union (1970-1976), an improvisation collective reuniting several original Judson choreographers: Yvonne Rainer, David Gordon, Trisha Brown, with Douglas Dunn, Lincoln Scott, Barbara Dilley, and Becky Arnold.

In 1972, Paxton instigated Contact Improvisation, the physical basis of bodies moving in touch: the fluid give and take of weight, initiation, reflexes and innate physical empathy. Contact Improvisation went on to become an international network of dancers who convene to practice and publish news and research in the dance and improvisation journal Contact Quarterly, where Paxton has been a contributing editor since 1975. He founded Touchdown Dance with Anne Kilcoyne in England in 1986, offering dance to the visually impaired.

In 1986, he began research on Material for the Spine. MFS is derived from observation of Contact Improvisation, in which the spine becomes an essential “limb”. MFS is a meditative, technical study of spinal and pelvic movement potentials. In 2008, Paxton published an interactive digital publication Material for the Spine with Contredanse, Brussels, and created exhibitions with its materials; Phantom Exhibition, shown in Belgium, Portugal and Japan, and Weight of Sensation at MoMA (USA).

Paxton maintains a long-term collaboration with dancer Lisa Nelson: PA RT (1979) and Night Stand (2004). In 2016, he toured a revival of Bound (1982) and premiered Quicksand in NYC, an opera by Robert Ashley with choreography by Paxton.

In 2018, with Contredanse Editions, he published his first book Gravity, later translated into French La gravité. This edition is also available as an audiobook in mp3 format and on a collector’s vinyl.

In 2019 in Lisbon, a major exhibition is dedicated to him Drafting Interior Techniques. In 2020, an online publication Conversations in Vermont hosts a very large collection of recorded interviews with him and Lisa Nelson.

In 2019, Contredanse celebrates Steve Paxton at the Swimming in Gravity event. Lecture, exhibition, encounter, workshops to celebrate their 15 years of collaboration.

During his career, Paxton received three New York Dance and Performance Awards, or Bessies, including a lifetime achievement award in 2015; the Vermont Governor’s Award for Excellence in the Arts in 1994; and the Golden Lion Lifetime Achievement award from the Venice Biennale in 2014. He has received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, Change, Inc., Experiments in Art and Technology, and a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1995. In 2017, he received a United States Artists award.

He lives in Vermont. He passed away on Feb 20, 2024.