Investigating Connection-Building Strategies Used by Contact Improvisation Dancers
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 23312259 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Klara Łucznik (0000-0002-3015-8445, University of Warsaw), Julian Zubek (0000-0003-4842-5609, University of Warsaw, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2026 |
| Publication date | 2026-07-31 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Human Arenas (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 2522-5790 • E-ISSN: 2522-5804 |
| Publisher | Springer Science and Business Media LLC (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1007/s42087-026-00683-2 |
| OpenAlex | W7172033288 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 78 |
The feeling of togetherness, which we understand as creating something larger than oneself with others, often emerges in creative, open-ended interactions. Existing ethnographic accounts suggest that contact improvisation, which is an improvised dance form stressing tactile somatic communication, elicits particularly strong feelings of intimacy and connection. We ask what forms of attention are associated with these feelings and what interactional skills can be used to foster them. To investigate this, in this study, we record eight short contact improvisation duets in controlled conditions. Video recordings are used as prompts for in-depth interviews with dancers involved and with expert contact improvisation teachers. Based on the interviews, we portray togetherness as a state of mindful attunement to one’s partner, in which dancers co-create their dance without visible roles or turn-taking dynamics. We associate togetherness with moments in dance when dancers’ attention is focused on the process happening “in between” individuals, and they feel that the “dance dances itself”. To achieve this state, dancers use deliberate strategies, such as shifting attention focus to peripheral vision, adjusting the speed of their actions, and expanding the field of trust. Our results show that, if theories of social cognition are to be congruent with human experience, they should explain both individual- and collective-level processes.
Attunement · Dance · Dance education · Ethnography · Eye contact · Feeling · Focus (optics) · Improvisation · Action Observation and Synchronization · Diversity and Impact of Dance · Embodied and Extended Cognition
Thought in Action
Linguistic Bodies
The Primacy of Movement
Enactive intersubjectivity
Rocking together
Action Observation and Acquired Motor Skills
A minimal architecture for joint action
It's All in the Timing
Joint action
Social Connection Through Joint Action and Interpersonal Coordination
Thematic Analysis
Improvisation and thinking in movement
Expanding Empathic and Perceptive Awareness
The sense of agency in joint action
Dances and Affordances
United agency in joint action
Interkinaesthetic affectivity
Intercorporeity and the first-person plural in Merleau-Ponty
Intercorporeality as a theory of social cognition
Creative Intercorporeality in Collaborative Work of Choreographers with and without Disabilities
Dancing Intercorporeality
The Micro-Genesis of Interpersonal Synergy. Insights from Improvised Dance Duets
Skilled performance in Contact Improvisation
Intentions in interactions
Shared Cooperative Activity
How to Land
Participatory sense-making
Synchrony and Cooperation
Video-Cued Narrative Reflection
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |