By J.S. Bach,
played by Glenn Gould,
improvised by Steve Paxton,
filmed by Walter Verdin
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©1992 Walter Verdin / Steve Paxton
In the early nineties, I made a video based on an improvisational dance performance by Steve Paxton on the Goldberg Variations. It was a long lasting performance where he improvised on the music of Bach, played by Glenn Gould. Every performance was different and evolved during the period that he performed it.
I had the honor to film Steve in Amsterdam in April 1992 during two weeks at the Felix Meritis concert hall, a very special oval space. At the end of the shooting period he performed 'Goldberg Variations' for the last time. A memorable evening.
In the video that I made out of all the shootings, I 'video-performed' the music of Bach, following my own artistic points of view. All the movements of Steve were kept exactly on the places in the music where he danced it to. It fitted in a wonderful way, organically. But this editing was more a personal view of myself. I edited Steve's dance to a new 'video composition', my interpretation of Bach's music, played by Glenn Gould and improvised by Steve Paxton. The raw material that I used was the music of Gould and the video recordings of Steve's dance, Steve's body movements.
During the shooting sessions, Steve did not always dance to the complete score in one row. We choose for 16 different camera positions and angles in the oval space. For each take, Steve mostly danced on 3 to 5 consecutive variations. This resulted in a complex, but structured library of rushes, that I used for the editing of the video.
Thanks to Anne Van Aerschot (Rosas) who was my assistant for the shooting in 1992, these rushes are now digitized by Meemoo, the Flemish Institute for Archives, and part of the digital archives of Rosas. After the release of the DVD (2017), Steve and I obtained the ownership of the production from Kaaitheater, the original producer of the video. This opens the door for further exploitation of the video, that was unavailable for the public during a long time because the musical rights were not cleared. But also all the rushes, an untapped treasure of dance heritage, can now be shared with the world: the dance world and the art world in general.
To make this come true, I am thinking about a (research) project where researchers, students, dancers and video makers collaborate. The final output is still open and depends on interested producers, organizations, schools, universities, artistic and scientific collaborators etc etc.... My first idea is to make a multiscreen installation (with or without live dance), but the result could also be a performance, a website, a vodcast, a book, a conference... or a combination of it.
Walter Verdin 2021
Who was Steve Paxton
Ο
Στίβεν Ντάγκλας Πάξτον ήταν Αμερικανός πειραματικός χορευτής και
χορογράφος. Το πρώτο του υπόβαθρο ήταν στη γυμναστική, ενώ η μετέπειτα
προπόνησή του περιελάμβανε τρία χρόνια με τον Merce Cunningham και ένα
χρόνο με τον José Limón. 
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