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Paper short abstract

Extending my research on queer men’s meaning making of touch in Berlin Contact Improvisation, this workshop investigates embodied processes of knowing, exploring how personal backgrounds shape the immediate meanings of touch, the mapping of categories, and the negotiation of boundaries.

Paper long abstract

Growing up male in early 90s China, my desire to learn dance was dismissed as feminine. Years later, encountering Contact Improvisation (CI) in Berlin reactivated these long suppressed impulses and led me to an autoethnographic inquiry: how do queer men negotiate sexual hierarchy, masculine roles, and the meaning of touch?

Many participants describe CI as “better than sex,” healing, and as “feeling at home.” Drawing on phenomenology, hegemonic masculinity, kinesthetic perception, intra-action, flow, and queer futurity, I ask how queer men negotiate meanings of touch and cultivate a sense of home psychosomatically, intra-subjectively, and politically through CI. Using Rubin’s sexual value hierarchy, I argue that CI deconstructs hierarchies of touch and fosters forms of horizontal homosociality. By transforming skin into a porous interface, dancers move from isolation toward a critical utopia of intra-active, embodied belonging.

The workshop begins with a 10-minute introduction to the paper, accompanied by photo documentation and music, and then shifts into experiential practice. Regardless of participants’ identities, the session addresses universal questions of contact. In intuitively chosen pairs, participants engage in three classic CI exercises to explore embodied processes of knowing. By prioritising the kinesthetic over the cognitive, we examine how personal histories and cultural sedimentations shape immediate meanings of touch, social categorisation, and boundary negotiation.

The session concludes with shared silence, a collective clap, and group reflection. If CI can foster belonging for queer people, can embodied practice also challenge binary thinking and open possibilities for a more depolarised world?

Estimated duration: 25 minutes.