Consent in Contact Dance

In January 2026 I had the opportunity to facilitate a workshop in New York on consent and consensus in the practice of Contact Improvisation, as part of the gathering Boundaries & Boundless – A Contact Improv Workshop, coordinated by Gabrielle Revlock, a professional in choreography, dance and Restorative Contact. Over several days, we combined body practice, dialogue and experimentation to explore the relationship between boundaries and freedom in improvisation.

Contact Improvisation is a somatic practice based on bodily listening, shared weight and improvisation. In this encounter between bodies, questions arise that go far beyond movement: how we formulate a proposal, how we read the other person’s body, or how we respond when something makes us uncomfortable.

When we speak of “consent”, beyond the legal and/or contractual framework — which we will not go into on this occasion — we may refer to the process in which a proposal is made and either accepted or rejected. Both paths can take different forms: a refusal may involve verbal communication, a transformation of the situation, slipping away or even leaving; acceptance is not absolute either, and includes countless nuances. When consent “becomes flesh”, we perceive that it carries a connotation of allowing, consenting, yielding to a proposal or initiative, and consequently roles of active and passive person are generated.

For its part, “consensus” goes further and is an ideal horizon to move towards, since it is a fully horizontal dialogue that bodies can reach by dancing and truly listening to one another. To inhabit that consensus is to generate and sustain a fragile balance, because it is not something static or fixed; rather, it mutates, transforms and transforms us, while also surprising and creating.

In contexts we perceive as safe, we can develop that right to explore which has recently been discussed in some feminisms. It basically consists of the idea that desires emerge from interaction, that we do not always know what we want, and that sometimes we discover things we did not know we liked. Applied to Contact Improvisation: if we knew in advance exactly what a dance was going to be like, who would want to dance? So seeking something we do not know will fit exposes us to the vulnerability involved in needing another person in order to discover something about ourselves.

And here another key issue arises: power dynamics do not disappear when we take off our shoes and enter a dance room. We bring our personal experiences to the practice, shaped by privileges and our social positions. Experience in the practice, gender, age, body normativity, ableism, sexual orientation or gender identity can influence how we move, how we make proposals, or how capable we feel of setting boundaries.

These reflections connect deeply with the work we carry out at the cooperative Iniciativas de Justicia Transformadora. In different contexts — organisations, collectives or communities — we accompany processes to understand how power dynamics operate, and what we need in order to build safer and more collectively responsible environments.

Perhaps that is why I am so interested in continuing to explore these intersections between body, consent and consensus, and transformative justice. Because, in some way, a dance room can become a small laboratory in which to observe how we relate to one another, how uncomfortable situations are managed, and how we can transform them collectively.

Y porque aprender a escuchar, a responsabilizarnos de nuestras acciones y a cuidar los espacios compartidos es un trabajo que no termina en la danza. Continúa en muchos otros ámbitos de nuestras vidas.