In Memoriam Steve Paxton
On Mortality II
In Memoriam Steve Paxton
On Mortality II
A year before Aaron Bushnell was born I got to know Steve Paxton and Bill T. Jones (for some reason I find it impossible to separate the two) while working as a journalist covering Vienna’s “Impulstanz” dance festival. The difference between the age at the death of Bushnell and Paxton is roughly sixty years. The difference in modality is self-immolation and old age (unless Steve took the jab of course, which would make cause of death: suicide).
How much life, sixty years’ worth of it, Bushnell missed out on! And this is the key point. Money isn’t time, as Benjamin Franklin falsely and facetiously claimed, time is much, much more important, which is why we have to cherish fond memories (“that is one thing they can’t take away from us” a friend recently said) and why we have to cherish each day as if it were our last. We always need to be aware of our own mortality and the finiteness of our mortal existence.
One of my fondest memories is of Steve Paxton and of dancing as part of a project he was involved in: “Crash Landing”[1]. Another of my fondest memories is of him dancing to “The Goldberg Variations”, which I still, to this day, regard as the best thing I’ve ever seen on stage. Experienced live (the video is unhappily, as all things digital: a pale imitation) the performance was simply sublime.
Dancing as part of “Crash Landing” (more exactly after the show had officially ended and the performance had become a free-for-all) was one of the most intense (and fearful) experiences of my life. The exhilaration of performing in front of an audience and the fear of failure and making a fool of oneself are as intoxicating as they’re intense. I can understand why it’s so difficult to give dance up.
There are few people who’d have appreciated Bushnell’s atavistic, authentic and ethical stance more than Steve Paxton, for whom petty materialism, egotism and vanity were anathema. I doubt though, that Steve (who focused on avoiding hurting others) would have approved such a violent act. He was a profoundly sweet and gentle person (who was nevertheless renowned and feared for being fiercely critical on questions of dance, many other dancers and choreographers didn’t like him as a result and he tended to be left alone).
Both Steve Paxton and Aaron Bushnell had a hard rock of morality, a point beyond which they were not willing to go and both had a vexed relationship with the state. It seems that Aaron Bushnell didn’t want to get involved in murdering children in Gaza while Steve Paxton also had a fierce and moral objection to war crimes. If Steve objected to the genocidal war in Vietnam (which resulted in roughly six million Vietnamese deaths) Bushnell objected to the US sponsored genocide in Gaza.
I imagine that Bushnell strove after the same high ideals of purity that Steve attained (the difference is that in politics (and protest) it’s impossible to attain high ideals whereas it is in the realm of art).
And both denied the self. Bushnell negated himself and Steve was self-effacing: it was hard to notice him, so small and skinny he was, and so wholly without vanity or even a trace of smugness or arrogance (how different to many lesser artists!).
Both Bushnell, on account of his integrity, and Steve Paxton, on account of his intelligence, sweetness, kindness toward others, and idealism (as well as brilliance and artistic greatness) will be sorely missed.
[1] “Many of Meg Stuart’s projects deal with the history and the current state of improvisation. She thus initiated and curated the interdisciplinary improvisation series Crash Landing in collaboration with Christine De Smedt and David Hernandez, which took place in Leuven, Vienna, Paris, Lisbon and Moscow. Beginning with a dialogue and the desire to rethink the understanding of and experience with improvisation as a form of performance, they allow for an experiment with an open ending and create a forum for a multiplicity of artists. In total, over 80 choreographers, designers, visual artists, musicians, actors, directors and authors took part, exchanged ideas and improvised together. De Smedt, Hernandez and Stuart each suggest a plan and open questions; the rest is discovered by the group on stage. Stuart’s aim is to be out of control, to make spontaneous decisions, share responsibility and dare to fail. The improvisations alternated between installations, concerts, dance, parties and odd mutations of all of these forms; strange dances, situations and images were created. In a best case scenario, Crash Landing is a model of hybrid thought processes.” Quoted from: https://www.damagedgoods.be/crash-landing
R.I.P. both men of conscience and compassion.