Steve Paxton
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Steve Paxton
Steve Paxton (born 1939 in Phoenix, Arizona) is an experimental dancer and choreographer. His early background was in gymnastics while his later training included three years with Merce Cunningham and a year with José Limón. As a founding member of the Judson Dance Theater, he performed works by Yvonne Rainer and Trisha Brown. He was a founding member of the experimental group Grand Union and in 1972 named and began to develop the dance form known as Contact Improvisation, a form of dance that utilizes the physical laws of friction, momentum, gravity, and inertia to explore the relationship between dancers. Paxton believed that even an untrained dancer could contribute to the dance form, and so began his great interest in pedestrian movement. After working with Cunningham and developing chance choreography, defined as any movement being his generation whose approach has influenced choreography globally. He attempts to remain reclusive, except when performing, teaching and ch ...
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Phoenix, Arizona
Phoenix ( ; nv, Hoozdo; es, Fénix or , yuf-x-wal, Banyà:nyuwá) is the List of capitals in the United States, capital and List of cities and towns in Arizona#List of cities and towns, most populous city of the U.S. state of Arizona, with 1,608,139 residents as of 2020. It is the List of United States cities by population, fifth-most populous city in the United States, and the only U.S. state capital with a population of more than one million residents. Phoenix is the anchor of the Phoenix metropolitan area, also known as the Valley of the Sun, which in turn is part of the Salt River Valley. The metropolitan area is the 11th largest by population in the United States, with approximately 4.85 million people . Phoenix, the seat of Maricopa County, Arizona, Maricopa County, has the largest area of all cities in Arizona, with an area of , and is also the List of United States cities by area, 11th largest city by area in the United States. It is the largest metropolitan area, bo ...
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Momentum
In Newtonian mechanics, momentum (more specifically linear momentum or translational momentum) is the product of the mass and velocity of an object. It is a vector quantity, possessing a magnitude and a direction. If is an object's mass and is its velocity (also a vector quantity), then the object's momentum is : \mathbf = m \mathbf. In the International System of Units (SI), the unit of measurement of momentum is the kilogram metre per second (kg⋅m/s), which is equivalent to the newton-second. Newton's second law of motion states that the rate of change of a body's momentum is equal to the net force acting on it. Momentum depends on the frame of reference, but in any inertial frame it is a ''conserved'' quantity, meaning that if a closed system is not affected by external forces, its total linear momentum does not change. Momentum is also conserved in special relativity (with a modified formula) and, in a modified form, in electrodynamics, quantum mechanics, quan ...
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Artists From Tucson, Arizona
An artist is a person engaged in an activity related to creating art, practicing the arts, or demonstrating an art. The common usage in both everyday speech and academic discourse refers to a practitioner in the visual arts only. However, the term is also often used in the entertainment business, especially in a business context, for musicians and other performers (although less often for actors). "Artiste" (French for artist) is a variant used in English in this context, but this use has become rare. Use of the term "artist" to describe writers is valid, but less common, and mostly restricted to contexts like used in criticism. Dictionary definitions The ''Oxford English Dictionary'' defines the older broad meanings of the term "artist": * A learned person or Master of Arts. * One who pursues a practical science, traditionally medicine, astrology, alchemy, chemistry. * A follower of a pursuit in which skill comes by study or practice. * A follower of a manual art, such as a m ...
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Contemporary Dance Choreographers
Contemporary history, in English-language historiography, is a subset of modern history that describes the historical period from approximately 1945 to the present. Contemporary history is either a subset of the late modern period, or it is one of the three major subsets of modern history, alongside the early modern period and the late modern period. In the social sciences, contemporary history is also continuous with, and related to, the rise of postmodernity. Contemporary history is politically dominated by the Cold War (1947–1991) between the Western Bloc, led by the United States, and the Eastern Bloc, led by the Soviet Union. The confrontation spurred fears of a nuclear war. An all-out "hot" war was avoided, but both sides intervened in the internal politics of smaller nations in their bid for global influence and via proxy wars. The Cold War ultimately ended with the Revolutions of 1989 and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. The latter stages and afterm ...
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American Male Dancers
American(s) may refer to: * American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America" ** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America ** American ancestry, people who self-identify their ancestry as "American" ** American English, the set of varieties of the English language native to the United States ** Native Americans in the United States, indigenous peoples of the United States * American, something of, from, or related to the Americas, also known as "America" ** Indigenous peoples of the Americas * American (word), for analysis and history of the meanings in various contexts Organizations * American Airlines, U.S.-based airline headquartered in Fort Worth, Texas * American Athletic Conference, an American college athletic conference * American Recordings (record label), a record label previously known as Def American * American University, in Washington, D.C. Sports teams Soccer * Ba ...
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American Choreographers
American(s) may refer to: * American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America" ** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America ** American ancestry, people who self-identify their ancestry as "American" ** American English, the set of varieties of the English language native to the United States ** Native Americans in the United States, indigenous peoples of the United States * American, something of, from, or related to the Americas, also known as "America" ** Indigenous peoples of the Americas * American (word), for analysis and history of the meanings in various contexts Organizations * American Airlines, U.S.-based airline headquartered in Fort Worth, Texas * American Athletic Conference, an American college athletic conference * American Recordings (record label), a record label previously known as Def American * American University, in Washington, D.C. Sports teams Soccer * B ...
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Robert Ashley
Robert Reynolds Ashley (March 28, 1930 – March 3, 2014) was an American composer, who was best known for his television operas and other theatrical works, many of which incorporate electronics and extended techniques. His works often involve intertwining narratives and take a surreal multidisciplinary approach to sound, theatrics and writing, and have been continuously performed by various interpreters during and after his life, including ''Automatic Writing'' (1979) and '' Perfect Lives'' (1983). Life and career Ashley was born in Ann Arbor, Michigan. He studied at the University of Michigan with Ross Lee Finney. Later, he studied at the Manhattan School of Music, and then became a musician in the US Army. After moving back to Michigan, Ashley worked at the University of Michigan's Speech Research Laboratories. Although he was not officially a student in the acoustic research program there, he was offered the chance to obtain a doctorate, but turned it down to pursue his mu ...
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Lisa Nelson
Lisa Nelson is an American dance-maker, improviser, videographer, and collaborative artist. She was born in New York City in 1949 and currently lives in Northern Vermont. Dancing life Lisa Nelson began her training in traditional modern dance and ballet as a child at the Juilliard School in New York City and then Bennington College in Vermont. In the 1970s, she became interested in diverse approaches to dance improvisation, including performing with Daniel Nagrin’s Workgroup in 1971-72. In 1973, she began a ten year investigation of video and dance from which she developed an approach to spontaneous composition and performance under the name ''Tuning Scores.'' Beginning in 1974, she took part, along with dancers Steve Paxton, Nancy Stark Smith and others, in the early evolution of contact improvisation, and was a crucial observer of its development through her work with video. In the ensuing decades, she has worked extensively with Steve Paxton, in particular on two improvis ...
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Venice Biennale
The Venice Biennale (; it, La Biennale di Venezia) is an international cultural exhibition hosted annually in Venice, Italy by the Biennale Foundation. The biennale has been organised every year since 1895, which makes it the oldest of its kind. The main exhibition held in Castello, in the halls of the Arsenale and Biennale Gardens, alternates between art and architecture (hence the name ''biennale''; ''biennial''). The other events hosted by the Foundationspanning theatre, music, and danceare held annually in various parts of Venice, whereas the Venice Film Festival takes place at the Lido. Organization Art Biennale The Art Biennale (La Biennale d'Arte di Venezia), is one of the largest and most important contemporary visual art exhibitions in the world. So-called because it is held biannually (in odd-numbered years), it is the original biennale on which others in the world have been modeled. The exhibition space spans over 7,000 square meters, and artists from ov ...
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Foundation For Contemporary Arts
The Foundation for Contemporary Arts (FCA), is a nonprofit based foundation in New York City that offers financial support and recognition to contemporary performing and visual artists through awards for artistic innovation and potential. It was established in 1963 as the Foundation for Contemporary Performance Arts by artists Jasper Johns, John Cage, and others. FCA was founded on the principle of "Artists for Artists" support as visual artists united to sponsor performance artists through grants funded by the sale of donated artworks. The first benefit exhibition was at the Allan Stone Gallery in 1963. Among contributors to the Foundation's first benefit exhibition were Marcel Duchamp, Ellsworth Kelly, Willem de Kooning, Elaine de Kooning, Roy Lichtenstein, Robert Motherwell, Barnett Newman, Robert Rauschenberg, Claes Oldenburg, and Andy Warhol. Since its establishment, FCA has awarded more than 2,500 non-restrictive grants to individual artists and art organizations throu ...
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Nancy Stark Smith
__NOTOC__ Nancy Stark Smith (February 11, 1952 – May 1, 2020) was an American dancer and founding participant in contact improvisation. Early life and education Born in Brooklyn, New York, on February 11, 1952, Stark Smith was the child of Dr. Joseph J. Smith, a professor of gynecology and obstetrics at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, and his wife Lucille (Stark) Smith. In 1954, her family moved to Great Neck, New York, and her mother died when she was five. Initially she trained as an athlete and gymnast and had little interest in dance, “I’d see the dancers standing in front of a wall of mirrors looking at themselves and making little movements. I didn’t understand what was exciting about that.” Stark Smith’s interest in dance was sparked in her first year at Oberlin College, where she participated in a residence with the Twyla Tharp company. She was intrigued by Tharp’s movement practices and inspired to continue studying modern and post-modern dance. While i ...
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Contact Improvisation
Contact improvisation is a form of improvised partner dancing that has been developing internationally since 1972. It involves the exploration of one's body in relationship to others by using the fundamentals of sharing weight, touch, and movement awareness. It has evolved into a broad global community of social dancing around "jams" characterized by their welcoming attitude towards newcomers to dance, as well as seasoned practitioners, and is often found overlapping with ecstatic dance communities. American dancer and choreographer Steve Paxton originated contact improvisation, drawing from his past training in aikido, a martial art form, to explore and push boundaries with his colleagues and students to develop this new practice. Contact improvisation plays with the artistry of falling off balance, counterbalance, finding the shelves of the body, learning the mechanics of the body in order to handle someone else's weight or be lifted, breathing techniques, and can involve the ...
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