Making space for the wimp-subject in contact improvisation

This is an autoethnographic article that unpicks the author’s experiences of navigating the form and the social world of contact improvisation (CI) as a crip bodymind that routinely passes as normative and (very) ‘able’. Drawing on fieldnotes made across a year of practising and studying CI in London, it considers what kind of subjectivities and social relations this dance form summons, encourages and constitutes. This article proposes that the ideal subject of CI is characterized by vitality, agility, intense desire, openness to risk, an ability to attune to oneself and to others and a combination of self-reliance and willingness (and capacity) to cooperate. The article draws parallels and (dis)continuities between these features and the aspects of subjecthood fostered by late capitalist ‘risk society’ and the risk subjects it conjures. It then enquires whether this ideal subject is compatible with certain neurodivergent and other crip ways of being-in-the-world. The article proceeds to consider how, and if, space can be made in CI for what is ironically defined here as the ‘wimp’ subject: less disposed to embrace risk; not adept at quick decision-making; not thrill-seeking, and easily overwhelmed by sensory and nervous stimulation.