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.