The first picture is of Judith Dunn, Robert Dunn's wife performing Motorcycle, with Steve Paxton in the back, in one of Robert Dunn's works at Judson Dance.

This photo is of Steve Paxton in "Rialto" in 1964 at Judson Dance Sanctuary. 

All about Dunn

John Cage asked Robert Dunn to teach a class in choreography and composition at the Merce Cunningham studio in 1960. Dunn was not a dancer, he mostly accompanied for Merece's studio. He gained his musical knowledge by studying at the New England Conservatory and at Boston Conservatory of music. In 1958, Dunn performed in Boston and was recognized and asked to work at the American Dance Festival in Connecticut. After this, he moved to New York and worked with artists such as Martha Graham, Merce Cunningham, José Limón, and Paul Taylor. Dunn was also influenced by Louis Horst. Two of John Cage's principles he used were the use of noise and silence in music and his move towards theatrics in musical performance.

    The approach Dunn used for his classes was most like John Cage's. Most alike was the chance procedures. However, he added assignments for the choreography students, " materials and ideas put forth for their possible suggestiveness to further work." He also believed in Cage's idea about musical form: "Structure in music is its divisibility into successive parts from phrases to long sections. Form is content, the continuity.  Method is the means of controlling the continuity from note to note.  The material of music is sound and silence. Integrating these is composing." 

   The writing of dances- or the "graphy"in choreography as he called it, is crucial to the compositional process. This is not in the sense of recording what the dance exactly was, but rather to objectify the composition process.   Paxton remembers Dunn's style as being Zen-Like. Dunn was very into Tai-Chi and different art forms of the contemporary genre. He liked to pose questions to his students out of this mind set and out of the basic elements of structure and method.

   "It follows therefore that no single dance is about any one idea or story, but rather a variety of things that in performance fuse together and decide the nature of the whole experience."- Dunn

Dunn stressed the value of ordinary and the value of stillness. This is very similar to pedestrian type movements that Paxton uses and that are still used as prompts of improvisation in modern dance today. He was also very interested in the idea of repetition and repetitive time structures. Yvonne Rainer took a class from Dunn and this may be a source of her fascination with repetition and the emotions it evokes. Dunn was well known for stressing working quickly and clarifying the concepts behind each dance.

-Information from Terpsichore in Sneakers Post Modern Dance- Sally Banes

Democracy's Body Judson Dance Theater 1962-1964-Sally Banes

Dancing of Paxton- focus of the spine

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h4JcXB04UOg

Dunn

Music was a big part of Dunn's life. He was great influenced by john Cage and applied his concepts into his compositions and accompaniment of classes. He mostly contributed in the post-modern time in New York. In the 50's and 60's some political and social events that were happening included; segregation becoming illegal, JFK's assassination, and the sending of troops to Vietnam. He believed that the sense of human relationships and social occasions  arise in the interface of art and life. He was also very aware of the music, poetry, and literature around him and he let that influence his work.

Influences on Paxton

Some things that could have influenced Paxton's artistic views could be that when he started dancing with Limon, Cunningham and other post modern dancers it was during the 1960s "The Golden Age".  This is an age when tremendous change was going on!  There was events like the assassination of JFK, and music was changing how people thought.  This time era in general might of had a lot to do with why Paxton was so interested in partner work (contact improv).  The one that sticks out to me the most would be the Vietnam war that was going on, maybe Paxton was interested in bringing people together artistically.  I believe that this would have a lot to do with his development of his artistic voice.  At the same time in the 60s everything was changing so much which could be why he chose to use movement that wasn't the "norm" in post modern dance.  He used a lot of walking, running, and pedestrian movements, which was so different from other works.  This could be because of the heat of the Golden Age, and the fact that everyone was changing their thoughts and actions!

-Amelia

Robert Ellis Dunn lineage

Robert Dunn started off studying tap and then studied and taught  music in England. From there, he began studying at the Boston Conservatory where he began working with Merce Cunningham. He
first collaborated and is known for working with Cunningham in Boston and New York City. Dunn attended many of John Cage's seminars on composition and applied many of Cage's principles to his movement classes. Dunn appreciated and applied Cage's non-judgemental approach in teaching. He encouraged his dancers to play and experiment with phrasing and musicality inside of improvisation.
Steve Paxton, Trisha Brown, and David Gordon are some of his students that he had. In 1962, his class performed his work at Judson Memorial Church. This performance was considered a new era of modern dance because of its non traditional approaches to choreography, specifically in the use of improvisation. Dunn was interested in "videodance" and worked with Matt Chernov on installing this and premiered this in the Haggerty Museum of Art in Milwaukee in 1997.

"For several years now, I have felt that the two greatest learning occasions of my life were provided by John Cage, my teacher of experimental music, in the late 50s and early 60s, and Irmgard Bartenieff, my teacher of movement analysis, in the early 70s. In each case the influence was so deep and pervasive that it is impossible to lift it out for objective examination." -Robert Dunn, Strathmore Museum

-Melissa Gross

Steve Paxton influences

Steve Paxton started off as a gymnast and is the creator of contact improvisation.  Paxton was a member of the Josè Limón in 1960 and danced for Merce Cunningham as well in 1961.  He became an avant-garde dance collective in Judson Dance Theater.  Paxton tries to break the wall between dancers and non-dancers.  Paxton questioned the elements of dance, and pushed limits.  He was inspired to look at the human spine in ways that no one else did.  He has a whole movement exploration on the spine and how it can be used in a meditative way while dancing.  The human body was an inspiration in itself for Paxton.  I believe that a lot of movement would seem irrelevant if it wasn't for Paxton.  Paxton is also known as the creator of contact improvisation, contact improvisation is an ever evolving form of movement done with more than one person.  Improvising with this person in a space where you come into contact with other bodies to find a certain connection.  These bodies are in a physical connection with each other that can create a type of communication between the two bodies.  Contact Improvisation is an exploration not only with other bodies but with other elements as well, like gravity and momentum.  The spontaneity of contact improv also creates an alertness between dancers, which can build a tremendous amount of trust.  Trust is one of the most important aspects of contact improvisation, this keeps the bodies movement from becoming anything but organic looking.

 "Contact Improvisation is an open-ended exploration of the kinaesthetic possibilities of bodies moving through contact. Sometimes wild and athletic, sometimes quiet and meditative, it is a form open to all bodies and enquiring minds."

-Ray Chung workshop announcement, London 2009

(http://www.contactquarterly.com/contact-improvisation/about/cq_ciAbout.php)

-Here is a video of what some contact improvisation looks like

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jcrbIdY3HZc

"Each body has a center of gravity of its own, but when they come together there is one center of gravity that they share." -Youtube video "Interkenected"

-Here is a video of what some of Paxton's work on the spine looks like

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8CntWmA1YTw

-Amelia Morris

Steve Paxton

         Steve Paxton was born in 1939 in Phoenix, Arizona and is currently still alive today. In his early years he did gymnastics and studied with Merce Cunningham (3 years) and José Limón (1 year). He is associated with the post-modern movement time period. He was very influenced by the art and performances in New York in the 1960's and 1970's.  He developed Contact Improvisation and explored giving weight equally and created a movement dialogue that involved both participants being totally engaged for endless amounts of time. Paxton's choreography questioned the established parameters of dance and explored movements like walking and running, which had not usually been considered part of dance vocabulary. Paxton was fascinated by expression of the human body and untrained dancers trying out his movement. He sees the form of the body being like a physical machine, sharing weight equally, having points of contact, being expressive by nature, and very human. The movements and form were very human like because the movements were simple every day movement mechanics. He also used architecture and the human body to show how the body can manipulate itself around objects. His content of dance explored texture, size, and shape. 

Biography

Robert Ellis Dunn was born in 1928 and died in 1996.  Born in Oklahoma, Dunn toured the world as a tap dancer, however his first lessons in the arts was with music.  Dunn was an American musician and choreographer, and had a contribution to the birth of the postmodern dance period in the early 1960s in New York.  He studied music theory at the New England Conservatory, and then started to study dance from 1955-1958 at the Boston Conservatory of Music.  During his time at the Boston Conservatory is where Dunn first started working with Merce Cunningham.  When Dunn would teach he urged his students to experiment with phrasing, musicality, technique, and order of sequence to develop a new style of dance.  Dunn always believed dance was an evolving process.  Dunn was given a 'Bessie' New York Dance and Performance Award in 1985, along with the American Dance Guild Award in 1988.