Steve Paxton

Throughout his 55-year career, he has researched the fiction of cultured dance and the “truth” of improvisation. Born in Arizona in 1939, he began his movement studies in gymnastics, then trained in modern dance and later in ballet, yoga, Aikido and Tai Chi Chuan. He is a founding member of the Judson Dance Theater and Grand Union. In 1972, he instigated Contact Improvisation. He created many dance pieces and developed a technique, Material for the Spine, published in Material for the Spine, a movement study, Contredanse Editions, 2008. Paxton received many awards in the US and Europe, including a New York Dance and Performance Lifetime Achievement Award in 2015 and the Golden Lion Lifetime Achievement Award from the Venice Biennale in 2014.