Steve Paxton, Simone Forti, Joseph Pilates and trigger point theory
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| Me in a tree, on the right in a skirt: the early California years. Photography by Fred Lonidier at Pauline Oliveros' wedding. |
"Trigger Point Theory as Aesthetic
Activism" is the title of my dissertation with the Zurich Node (Z-Node) of
the Planetary Collegium at the University of Plymouth, UK. In a series of five
chapters, I describe a holistic approach to understanding the space of
environmental degradation and resilient restoration with an original theory
I've written briefly about elsewhere. Understanding how to embody an experience of space is an integral to that theory as systems theory or Geographic Information Systems science (GISc). I plan is to develop that thesis into a book as
soon as I can put the PhD behind me. Meanwhile, from time to time, scraps of my
past remind me where my ideas came from, as Steve Paxton's recent appearance at
MOMA:
I first met Steve Paxton in person, in 1970 in a
workshop he did at Ace Galley in LA with Alex Hay. Steve & I were close
that summer and I loved his work, esp when I saw it for the first time in 1966
in the Armory "9 Evenings," as part of EAT. Steve Paxton brought
a deliberate appreciation of athleticism into the dance world.because he had
once taught gym classes in high school. He was part of developing contact
improv movement, no doubt inspired by football and basketball, which Simone
Forti then sought to develop even further, as what she once described during
rehearsal at UCSD I was part of, as a virtuosity of that technique. In Simone's
approach, she was recapitulating the historical trajectory of how ballet
developed from fencing in the seventeenth century. These two approaches were
mirrored in what Joseph Pilates called, "controlology," based on
watching animals and doing yoga.
The New Dance movement at Judson Church in the
sixties, fostered by the late Rev. William Moody was not just a series of
performances, it was an expression of a zeitgeist of those times as much as
Fluxus and Happenings. As individuals, Judson was a group I began to know
personally just before leaving NYC for California in 1968 and then early in my
career in So Calif: including Yvonne Rainer, Carolee Schneemann, Steve Paxton,
Alex Hay, Simone Forti, briefly Rauschenberg, etc.
"Joe," as he was known to his many
students, was not at all interested in what has popularly evolved as a set of
calisthenics. He was interested in creating a system of movement, highly
sensitized to the environment of movement, which therapeutically reshaped the
body's learned distortions, as from conventional sports training and ballet.
What I've spoken about briefly to colleagues and
occasional interviewers at various times, is how some of my performance ideas
for how to understand the space of a site that has been degraded, are grounded
in dance. I trained in ballet and did dressage from childhood.
My own experiences observing animals and doing
dressage opened me to Joe's ideas during my six years of work with him when he
was alive. It also gave me a unique perspective on Jill Johnston's brilliant
writing for the Village Voice, which I devoured every week for her expression
of the relationship between dance and experience of the city as a Happening in
those years. I was lucky to experience all that simultaneously. New
Dance was very connected to Joseph Pilates' thru the sixties, and what I
gleaned was later realized for me in my performance group, the American Ritual
Theatre (1969-1971). Those ideas are still integrated into my practice.
It was around that time that I also also met &
became close to Allan Kaprow and many of the other Fluxus folks, as, Peter Van
Riper and Alison Knowles, Dick Higgins, etc. I would TA for Allan Kaprow @ Cal
Arts in the early seventies and went thru many years of arguments as I hashed
out where their ideas began and ended in my thinking. But what I absorbed, has
stuck with me and grown over all these years, has been a relaxed but highly
sensitized relationship to space in the broadest possible sense.
To my regret, I didn't hear about Steve presenting
his work @MOMA until yesterday and because I fly out tonight to present at
the Restore Americas Estuaries National conference:
I will also miss Steve's video this evening but highly
recommend it to any of my readers.
So if anyone else out there can get to MOMA tonight, enjoy for me too!