Paxton believed that even an untrained dancer could contribute to the dance form, and so began his great interest in pedestrian movement.

[3] He lived in Connecticut, and then New York City, from the late 1950s through the 1960s, before moving to the Mad Brook Farm commune in East Charleston, Vermont, in 1970.

[3][4] Paxton was influenced by the experimental arts and performance scene in New York in the 1960s and 1970s, and he was interested in how the body could create a physical playground.

From his work with Merce Cunningham and José Limón, and later his contribution to the formation of the Judson Dance Theater and Grand Union, Paxton was fascinated with the exploration of the human body.

[9] With the emergence of his first dance Proxy (1961) activities in this piece such as walking, sitting, and eating would preoccupy Paxton’s approach to movement for some time.

In this piece he used three chickens, a full-sized overstuffed chair made of cake and yellow frosting, and clothes with zippers in the seams that could be taken off and put back together in an assortment of ways.

Not only was Paxton a revolutionary to the changing world of dance around him but his experimentation with movement and the structure of the human body crafted a different version of what it was to be a dancer.

Today dancers, performers, choreographers, and teachers from around the world have incorporated some form of his teachings of Contact Improvisation into their studies.