Joyful encounters: Dance, touch, and embodied ethics in times of COVID-19

This article explores the practice of Contact Improvisation during the COVID-19 pandemic, focusing on how dance serves as a means of repair. Drawing on Erin Manning's posthumanist philosophy, woven into both the theoretical and embodied practice of dance, it envisions touch as a social-relational bond capable of opening pathways to affective intensities, particularly the experience of joy. Employing and experimenting with affective ethnography, I explore the ethico-political aspects of touch, extending ongoing discussions of ethics as deeply embodied. Specifically, I show how this exploration could lead to theorizing an “embodied ethic of repair”, enabling future-oriented response-ability and reclaiming joy as an affective force for navigating forthcoming bio-political, social, and environmental challenges in and for organizations.