Miss Rosalind Holgate Smith

Research project: Touching Otherness and the Vocabulary of Contact Improvisation

Abstract

Through performance research this project investigates the vocabulary of touch from Contact Improvisation, a dance form based on touch. Drawing on Karen Barad's (2003, 2011, 2012) new materialist philosophy – and her understanding of touch as an entangled process that enables encounters with Otherness – the research explores how specific touch techniques facilitate encounters with Otherness. Exploring beyond the boundary of the skin, the project investigates haptic experiences among dancers and dancers moving in touch with environmental matter, such as water, soil and trees. Arguing, with Manning (2007: xv), that ‘touch […] enables the creation of worlds', Otherness is considered as emergent, a form of co-becoming with other bodies, species and materials. In a 21st century society where we are increasingly out of touch due to social distancing, touch prohbitions and widespread virtual communications, the project poses implications, provoking reflection on how we are communicating and coming together.