Steve Paxton

Biography

Steve Paxton was born in Phoenix, Arizona, in 1939 and moved to New York in 1958. There, he danced with the Merce Cunningham Company from 1961 through 1964 and was a central player in a number of profound shifts in modern dance, helping found the Judson Dance Theater in 1962 and the group Grand Union in 1970. Yvonne Rainer likes to joke that she invented running and Paxton invented walking, and indeed many of Paxton’s early works - including “Proxy, 1961, “Transit”, 1962, “English, 1963, and “Satisfyin Lover”, 1967 - made salient the act of walking. Paxton is also known as a founder of the movement technique known as contact improvisation. He and Lisa Nelson will perform Night Stand at DIA/NYC in October, 2013.