“A landmark documentary...delineates how virtuosity becomes identity”
- Debra Cash, NPR/WBUR
Kris Buxenbaum
Kris Buxenbaum was born and raised in Brooklyn and studied martial arts since he was 13-years old. He took some dance classes in high school, and started club-dancing seriously when he was 18-years old. He goes to clubs to relax: “I grew up in Brooklyn. I can see a shooting any time. So why go out on the weekend and see it again?”
Buxenbaum was seeking a good time, a place to dance and not “worry about beating somebody up, or being beaten up, or worry about someone’s bruised ego.” He found that kind of ambience in the early days at the Garage then, very soon afterwards, at the Loft, which became his real dance home. He met Archie and Bravo and all the Loft(ers) and worked, for a while, for DJ David Mancuso, the brilliant DJ and host of the Loft. “It was a family-type atmosphere,” he explains, where the dancing evolved from “hanging out, and we built off of everyone.”
Buxenbaum loved the “freedom of expression, physically, that you had -- which I had never experienced before. I enjoyed being able to walk around on my hands and do splits and not have people sit and stare at me like I was a lab specimen.” Buxenbaum signature moves are his soft yet precise 180-degree stretches that he uses vertically, horizontally, and when in his split-leaps or straddles-out on the floor. Attentive to his body’s form, his arms are balanced, and his big movements connect to each other with small two-steps. Buxenbaum has been a martial-arts instructor and personal trainer for many years.
Currently he is trainer/owner of his own training studio, “Strivers Fitness” where he follows a philosophy of personalizing the moves to best develop the individual’s mind and body.
