An investigation into the use of contact improvisation to make political dance performance / Josephine Dyer (2025)

What meaning can a contact improvisation performance have beyond the physical exploration of two or more bodies moving in contact? This practice-as-research project entitled An investigation into the use of contact improvisation to make political dance performance by Josephine Dyer draws on critiques influenced by Marxist and anti-colonialist thought. The researcher asks how contact improvisation can be political and considers how its potential radicalism has been thwarted by co-option into neo-liberalism or apolitical refuge. Interrogating her paradoxical love and distrust of contact improvisation, the researcher worked with a group of dancers to create a performance, with a particular interest in revealing contrasting relationships of oppression, resistance and care. The focus was not only on performance as product, but on the facilitation of the making process. The research led to a renewed appreciation of how the negotiation between dancers in contact improvisation can build trust and support and an understanding of how this has political significance. It points to further opportunities to explore contact improvisation in performance as well as imagining performance-making as a potential way to engage with or challenge contact improvisation’s unspoken and sometimes exclusionary conventions. This written dissertation is submitted alongside Interventions, a dance piece performed at the Laban Theatre in July 2025.