Dancer, improviser, and choreographer Steve Paxton has been researching the “fiction” of cultured dance and the “truth” of improvisation for six decades. This catalogue accompanies the first retrospective look at his work and legacy. Interestingly, in the case of Paxton, almost none of the usual remains of dance – scores, photographs, videos, interviews – were made or even kept by the artist himself. Thus the works recounted in the exhibition in Lisbon as well as in this publication were all made and conserved by others. The focus therefore is not the visible, exterior forms that were produced by him, but the felt and sensed, the mindfulness of his unique way of inhabiting movement.