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Some things come to mind: imagination, sensation, space, and the body – an impressionistic amble after Steve Paxton and the revision of Ave Nue Jeanine Durning
who defied institutionalism in dance and challenged conventions of performance, who resisted theorizing and defining of a form he helped to instigate – is now surrounded by students, theorists, dramaturges, teachers, documentaries and academics. Imagine a hand. Steve’s hand, extended and supported. An open hand, thick and wide and articulate from use, a hand that is poised to give, and to receive. Imagine re-imagining a performance that was made more than two decades ago. The main premise of the work was based on using a very long, narrow space. Two rostra, on which an audience of about 50 sat facing each other in close proximity, were gradually and steadily drawn apart via a kind of motorized pulley until coming to rest at either end of the 100 meter space. In 1985, the work was produced by a theater festival in Brussels and entailed: four months of preparation and rehearsal; a choreographer performing with four other people (another dancer and three actors); live cello and video projection; two weeks of public performances; and a giant, open, tangentially present hand, which introduced a kind of eerie, cartoonish realism to the piece’s abstract formalism. Ave Nue was originally scored from cutout photographs of sports-actions and other nonaesthetic based movements. In 2009, the circumstances are completely different, and none of the conditions are the same. This work is presented as part of an artistin-residence program at the School for New Dance and Development in Amsterdam; the space, while still long, is shorter and wider than the original; Paxton has only three weeks in which to build the piece; ten students are performing and creating set material from tasks given and edited by Paxton; there are two invitation-only performances; and, finally, the audience is presented with not one but two giant, open, tangentially present hands. Imagine an avenue: a long pathway through which to enter or leave a ‘place.’ Indoors. A long, hollow