I was fortunate enough to study contact improvisation with Steve Paxton when he taught dance at Bennington College, and to participate in a dance workshop with Trisha Brown at the Whitney Museum’s Independent Study Program—the one summer it took place in New Mexico. So, it was no surprise to me to learn that Judson Church institutionalized generosity.

When dancing contact improvisation, you have to be completely attuned to the dancers around you. It’s a form where you literally feel your way through it—one person shifting weight, another offering balance, and both trusting that the floor, and each other, will be there. Trust is the foundation of this form of dance. People who understand this know that the welfare of those around you is intrinsically related to your own.

I didn’t realize it at the time, but the schools I attended — Woodstock Country School and later Bennington College — were direct descendants of the Bauhaus experiment. Each believed that art was not a subject but a way of understanding the world. The lineage that ran from Weimar to North Carolina to Vermont shaped not only my education but the way I’ve made art ever since.