Paxton's career of movement began with high school gymnastics and college “free exercises” or floor exercises. He also took lessons in Aikido and Tai Chi Chuan. Steve began to understand that “the mind can move through the body” (which is what he later called “mind travel”) at the young age of twelve. He was presented with three bowls in front of him: ice water on his left, room temperature at his center and boiling hot on his right. He was told to put the left hand into the left bowl and his right hand into the right bowl. Then, he put each hand into the center bowl was very surprised to feel a sensation of heat in the chilled hand and coolness in the heated one. His interests in the sensations of the body and how they relate to science, specifically physics, weave their way through his dance till this day.Paxton spent three years dancing with Merce Cunningham and Robert Dunn. During his work with Cunningham he became a part of the development the form of creating dance called "Chance Operations." This allowed the dance to be performed along side the music and allowed Cunningham to create dances that would never be possible in a traditional collaboration. Then Paxton danced with Jose Limon for one year. He was a founding member of the Judson Dance Theatre, the Grand Union, and Touchdown Dance for the Visually Impaired. He had a certain hunger to explore movement and fundamentals. He wanted to understand what movement is and what it can be. He created an entire "non-dance" dance vocabulary, and often worked with very non-traditional groups of dancers. In a more recent interview he said, “We need to keep the search for movement alive in a culture where it’s not a priority. People who study dance want to find the complete physicality of dance that gets messed up by sitting for twelve years in school, or longer.”
The majority of Paxton’s work was “semi-planned” improvisation and contact improvisation. Sometimes, the dancers knew concepts, themes or cues to follow but the rest was up to them. This is displayed in his work titled “Satisfying Lover,” where dancers mostly just walk across the stage in different groups and patters at varying tempos. Baryshnikov marveled at this work and after viewing it softly exclaimed, "It's so exciting! You see, it's different every time."
"Satisfying Lover" by Steve Paxton
Paxton collaborated on contact work with artists such as Nancy Stark Smith in a work called "Fall After Newton." This covered 11 years of contact improvisation between the two dancers, following them from 1972-1983. The work explored the many facets of contact improvisation and the dynamic between two people. It utilized slow movement and slow contact improvisation so that a viewer could see dynamics and details that would otherwise be glanced over. He also collaborated with Chris Aiken, Andrew de Lotbiniere Harwood and Asaf Bachrach, as well as, many others. -Carrie & Rachel
"Satisfying Lover" by Steve Paxton
Paxton collaborated on contact work with artists such as Nancy Stark Smith in a work called "Fall After Newton." This covered 11 years of contact improvisation between the two dancers, following them from 1972-1983. The work explored the many facets of contact improvisation and the dynamic between two people. It utilized slow movement and slow contact improvisation so that a viewer could see dynamics and details that would otherwise be glanced over. He also collaborated with Chris Aiken, Andrew de Lotbiniere Harwood and Asaf Bachrach, as well as, many others. -Carrie & Rachel
I am not very familiar with Steve Paxton so everything that I read on this blog was very informative. It was interesting to learn about his life growing up, how he had first had his main training in gymnastics and then went on to study Aikido and Tai Chi, and from these experiences he began to incorporate how the body and mind work together. I think that this comes to show how you can learn from each experience you have in life and have them feed off of on another to learn and understand something completely new.
ReplyDeleteI also found it really interesting that he did not have any formal dance training background. I think this probably left him less inhibited and more open to the unstructured form of contact improvisation. I can relate because I have very little formal dance training before college, and the fluidity of contact improvisation really appeals to me.
Delete~Rachel
Yes, I too am constantly impressed with how many of the great dancers of the past and even today had little or no dance training through their childhood. For example, even Gerald Cassel had no formal training before being accepted into Juliard (he just memorized dances off of music videos and found passion in movement). I began training at a young age and at first felt like I had to keep training no matter what because I was misinformed and thought that if I didn't dedicate my entire life to dance I wouldn't be a "star" someday. However, the older I'm getting the more I'm realizing that it's the passion behind the movement that can lead you to success or failure.
DeleteI found his research and fascination with sensations to be very interesting. So much of what we do in dance classes is based upon experiential information. Without being aware of subtle physicality we are unable to improve or perfect our movements. I bet that he would have been very interested in the Alexander Technique and how valuable physical awareness is for movement. I've always just thought of Steve Paxton as an improv guy, but now I see how much his work can influence all types of set dances.
ReplyDeleteI found his connections to science in generally to be very intriguing. I love that he deals with these physical sensations in relationship to the actually physics behind them. His ideas on the physics between two dancers allowed him to develop contact improve, but like you said, these ideas really relates to all types of dance.
Delete~Rachel
Who would have ever thought someone so well known in the dance world would create a "non-dance" technique. To any outsider, that would sound bizarre! Paxton certainly has a unique way of looking at dance, from a scientific point of view. Madeleine, I haven't found any evidence from his biographies/websites that he has dabbled into the Alexander Technique, but I'm sure if he has- he loves it. I immediately think of the exercise in the Dart procedures where you go "up on toes" by two opposing forces meeting between to partners. The force of both partners must meet in the middle for the front partner to get up on their toes; neither can crash completely into the other full force, or it won't work. That technique seems to have very similar principles to what Steve believes in.
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