So the idea of “set” is a kind of linguistic convenience, for these ways are more the same than they are different, each is just one of the possibilities.’ 29 Steve Paxton
‘The idea that there is such a thing as fixed form is actually as much an assumption about perception as it is an assumption about art … Art brings back out the fact that all form is necessarily dynamic form. There is no such thing as fixed form. Art is the technique for making that necessary but normally unperceived fact perceptible, in a qualitative perception that is as much about life itself as it is about the things we live by. Art is the technique of living life in – experiencing the virtuality of it more fully, living it more intensely.’ 30 Brian Massumi
‘Nothing exists but momentarily in its present form and color. One thing flows into another and cannot be grasped. The true purpose is to see things as they are, to observe things as they are, and to let everything go as it goes.’ Shunryu Suzuki-roshi (1905 – 71)
Reinvestment? Reinvention? Reinvestigation? Reconstruction? Or something else? Paxton, choreographer of Ave Nue, preferred to use the word ‘revision,’ 31 which seems appropriate for a project that has to do with parallax and optical illusions through the use of light, space and movement. Twenty-four years after it was first performed, Paxton – the godfather of improvisation, a man 29 Steve Paxton in conversation with Aat Hougee, ‘Chaos and Order: Improvisation Taken to the Limit,’ Movement Research Performance Journal #11, Fall 1995, reprinted courtesy of Mr. Hougee for Critical Correspondence. http://www.movementresearch.org/publishing/?q=node/458. 30 Brian Massumi, ‘The Thinking-Feeling of What Happens: A Semblance of a Conversation’,
Inflexions 1.1 ‘How is Research-Creation?’ www. inflexions.org, Universite of Montreal, Montreal, May 2008, p.7. 31 Steve Paxton, program notes for Ave Nue, Feb 13, 14, 2009 at Loods 6, KNSM laan 143, Amsterdam, See also Steve Paxton’s contribution to this publication Ave Nue 2.
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