Friday, February 14 | 6:30PM

Organized and hosted by Lisa Nelson and Cathy Weis

This special evening marks the opening of Danspace 50th festival celebration and includes video and remembrances of the groundbreaking artist Steve Paxton (Jan 21, 1939 – Feb 20, 2024). Paxton was a singular, iconic dance artist who graced the sanctuary over many decades and whose influence spans five generations. 

Choreographer, performer, and videographer Lisa Nelson, Paxton’s oft-collaborator and life companion, joins with choreographer and video artist Cathy Weis to share a selection of excerpts of rarely seen performance documents and video snapshots from his life at the Farm in Vermont. Interspersed with conversation, this viewing will give but a glimpse of the breadth of how, in Steve’s words, “dance is the art of taking place.”

Lisa writes “Prolific to a fare-thee-well, Steve’s thinking with the body’ left us a multiplex of paths to ponder. It would be hard to say which traces of his lifetime of giving dance will be most enduring—his writing, correspondence, talking, performing on and off stages, improvising, collaborating, composting, gardening, teaching, learning, playing, and hanging out. We are deeply grateful that video technology came of age close to the beginning of Steve’s adventure and we’ve had 50+ years to learn how to see through it.”

Paxton’s enormous influence on the dance field and on interdisciplinary artists such as Robert Rauschenberg, Ralph Lemon, Ishmael Houston-Jones, Jennifer Monson and other luminaries in movement and  art, is impossible to quantify. Ralph Lemon has written: “I didn’t know Steve until late in his life…but I had been in his audiences most of my art life, from his utterly wild, collectively exploratory Grand Union group days (Walker Art Center, 1975), the year I took my first dance class in Minneapolis and had no idea what I was looking at (I’m not even sure I was there, maybe I just heard about it); to his magnificent Goldberg Variations (Jacob’s Pillow, 1988), dancing that completely changed my dance thinking as the music in his body rivaled Gould and Bach; to Ash (Danspace Project, 1999)…to his longtime work with his longtime partner, Lisa Nelson, and their extraordinary intimacy.” –October Journal, 2024

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Before you visit:

Accessibility at Danspace Project
Covid Safety at Danspace Project