Steve Paxton: Personal Opinion
So what does Steve Paxton have to do with me? To begin with, he began a technique of exploration and play. To me, there has never been anything more satisfying than improvising with another person. Often times, when I try to recall it afterwards, I don't remember any of it other than the feeling I had during it. Contact improvisation allows me to reach a higher intellectual and spiritual state in which I experience another human being's perspective and way of moving through time and space. Contact improvisation improves upon one's own knowledge of their body and how they transfer and apply weight to a surface. This hyperawareness reaches into other areas of my life. One becomes aware of how others move through space in their daily life.
Contact improvisation has extended it's reach into my artwork. One can find many parallels between my artwork and my experiences with contact improvisation. This is apparent to how I treat space within a picture plane and how I use a medium. Often times, while working I am spread out in a configuration of supplies and I have to move frequently with large motions from the shoulder to create my work. I treat the picture plan as space and real life to find ways in which objects relate in my piece. Below is an example of how contact improvisation has related to my artwork.
Because I am so inspired by contact improvisation and believe in it's abilities to improve one's awareness of their body, time, and space, I have implemented it within my own classes. Contact improvisation is different with each person and sometimes it seems to flow and work well and other times partners have to push through tension to work cohesively. It is something that comes with time and experience. Below is a video of two artists Irene Sposetti and Johan Nilsson who created Being Motion in which they travel in areas of Stockholm and India to teach methods of contact improvisation.
What an amazing artist to have worked so thoroughly with contact improvisation! I wonder what that class would be like! I enjoyed the attached youtube.com video as well. Lots of great information
ReplyDeleteWatching that video of the contact improvisation was really astounding. I cannot believe that was all improv because of how well it flowed without stopping. I think Paxton's work with contact improvisation is important because dancers should be trained so that when an artist is creating movement, the dancers can easily try out new partnering methods through improvisation. This way the movement stays fresh, flows well, fits the partners, and doesn't get stale.
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