To go further — Steve Paxton

If you’d like to find out more about Steve Paxton, you can consult a wide range of documents in our Documentation Center. These include articles and interviews published by Contact Quarterly since 1976, as well as in other magazines such as Nouvelles de Danse and Dance Theater Journal. Several books such as: Judson Dance Theater. Performative traces (2006) or No Fixed Points. Dance in the Twentieth Century (2003). Terpsichore en Baskets (1987) and Reinventing Dance in the 1960s. Everything was possible (2003), by Sally Banes, two books about American postmodern dance. Steve Paxton: Drafting Interior Techniques (2019) is the first retrospective look at Steve Paxton’s work and legacy. You can also watch the films Ave Nue and Goldberg Variations. Also included is Steve Paxton and Ann Kilcoyne’s DVD-ROM on his work with the blind and sighted, directed by Peter Hulton. The web-app www.materialforthespine.com is also available online and for consultation in the documentation center.

Link to the list of available documents on Steve Paxton:

https://contredanse.doctopus.app/person/63dd50038fb6c1d2ce31ace8

About Contact Improvisation:

Steve Paxton is the originator of Contact Improvisation, which proposes physical principles for the movement of bodies in contact. Impossible to choose among the countless articles. Here are just a few of the books available from us:

→ Cynthia J. Novack, Sharing the dance. Contact improvisation and American Culture, University of Wisconsin Press,1990.

→ Contact Improvisation, ed. Nouvelles de Danse, 38-39, 1999. Collection of articles, ea by Paxton, and text by Karen Nelson, “Revolution through touch”.

→ Ann Brook, Contact Improvisation & Body-Mind Centering, Body-mind.net, 2000.

→ Nancy Stark Smith, David Koteen, Caught falling. The confluence of contact improvisation, Nancy Stark Smith, and other moving ideas, Contact Editions, 2008.

→ Danielle Goldman, I want to be ready. Improvised dance as a practice of freedom, The University of Michigan Press,2010.

→ Steve Paxton, Gravity, Contredanse, 2018 (and its original English version, Gravity).

→ Liesbeth de Jong, Sarah Guilleux, Les corps en vie. Carnet de voyage au pays de la Danse Contact Improvisation, 2018.

→ Martin Keogh, Dancing deeper still. The practice of contact improvisation, 2018.

You can also view excerpts from rehearsals, Contact Improvisation performances from the 70s and 80s in Fall After Newton and Chute.

Link to the list of documents available on Contact Improvisation:

https://contredanse.doctopus.app/search/Contact%20Improvisation