February Asides

Graced.

I am so sad to see Steve (Paxton) pass beyond us, but I also feel profoundly indebted to him for all that his presence in my life awakened in me. Gratitude of the highest order to him. In him, scientific exactitude met art with sharp clarity, precision and care that tracked how the practice of art is embedded in the principles of being a physical being, in-extractable from our earthly context and it’s forces. He seemed to keep his inner eye on that grace. He was so difficult a person for me, but I would not be who I am without him. His impact is that deep. While I learned amazing things about creative thinking as a dancer who shapes time and space as music from Judith Dunn, I learned to feel the physicality of physics and think as time and space in action from Steve. The explorations that became Contact Improvisation were as playful as they were death defyingly committed to the unfolding instant of moving. He took me so deeply inside the instantaneous experience of being in motion that I felt my mind in action long before this kind of idea was common. That dance, a kind of scientific / experiential fascination, was to shape my thinking, my ability to penetrate the phenomenon of moving and into what continues to drive me now, relational practices of physical attention… communication. Who comes up with a title like “Drafting Interior Techniques”? Shying away from anything additive, in dance and in the living of life, he knew how to fully appreciate the taste of a moment. Is there any greater gift? And so, I am filled with the joy of his having been in my life. I am forever graced.