In the early 1970s a rangy Arizonan arrived in Devon as a guest teacher at Dartington College of Arts. Steve Paxton brought with him the latest developments in postmodern dance from New York, where he had been a founding member of the seminal Judson Dance Theater, and had developed a dance form called contact improvisation.
On his repeat visits to the UK, especially to the Dartington dance festival, set up in 1978, members of the UK’s emerging contemporary dance scene flocked to see him. “There used to be this huge exodus from London every Easter, coach loads of dance people going down to Devon,” remembered Mary Prestidge, a dancer and member of the X6 Collective.
