The Limits Up Close: The Contact Improvisation as a Laboratory for Gender-Based Violence

This article analyzes some problematic aspects of bodily proximity and how boundaries are established within the world of Contact Improvisation dance in Buenos Aires. We analyze a set of experiences of gender violence, declinable as acts of intimidation and abuse, through an ethnographic study we conducted between 2018 and 2019. We then inquire into the controversies, debates, and the configuration of devices that the community gave itself to regulate such violent practices. In sum, we show how this "practical laboratory" allows us to understand in detail the deployment of micro-logical forms of violence, as well as experiences of regulation that move away from more traditionally punitivist modes.