Contact Improvisation and Dance Narratives – Body Memory and Embodied Knowledge

Abstract

This article concerns embodied knowledge closely connected to dance experience. I position my research project primarily on three autobiographic dance narratives concerning my involvement with the dance genre known as contact improvisation (CI). In making the argument that practicing CI creates experience and knowledge that become embedded in the body, I attempt to give the dancing body an “audible voice”, and apply theoretical concepts that are helpful in interpreting and elaborating my narratives. Key words: Dance-based research, autoethnography, body archive, intercorporeality, contact improvisation