Touch in Contact Improvisation: proximity/distance under intimate circumstances

Vionnet, Claire (2021). Touch in Contact Improvisation: proximity/distance under intimate circumstances. The Senses and Society, 16(3), pp. 320-338. Taylor & Francis 10.1080/17458927.2021.1982000

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This article investigates the experience of touch within the dance practice of Contact Improvisation. Drawing on eight months of ethnographic fieldwork in Montreal, the author explores the conventions/taboos regulating touch and the redefinition of intimate boundaries under circumstances of close proximity. The emergence of Contact Improvisation in the 1970s as a “touch revolution” is compared with today’s politics of touch – strongly impacted by #MeToo – to understand dancers’ oscillation between attraction and fear. Based on ethnographic and autoethnographic research, this article highlights aspects of the mindful body, such as the interrelatedness between touch, weight, movement and intention. Drawing on skin studies, it unravels how tactile communication encompasses information about kinesthesia, orientation, grounding, and weight, and proposes a novel take on the relationship between physical proximity and emotional intimacy.

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