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. 

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 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.

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 Contemporary Performance Arts Foundation,  Change, Inc., Experiments in Art and Technology, and a Guggenheim  Fellowship in 1995. In 2017, he became a USArtists Fellow. He lives in  Vermont.

Source: https://www.materialforthespine.com/