12.4.2026 / Kaisa Kukkonen

This is a text to discuss the topic of consent based on three talks I gave in 2025 at Contact Improvisation festivals: Skiing on Skin festival in Finland (together with Petri Taipale, Feb 2025), Midnight Sun CI Festival in Finland (June 2025) and finally Windberg Contact Festival in Germany (July 2025). All the talks were about one hour long and started with a short small group discussion: ”Why do we talk about consent in CI?”, continued more as a lecture until in the end the discussion was opened to the whole group.

I focus on dance and jams, not on sex or sexuality, although they are related and important. Contact improvisation, I believe, can be a great practice to exercise consent. In CI we can practice taking decisions, exploring alternatives, and implementing various ways we care for each other. 

Why Consent and CI?

The word ”consent” comes from Latin and roughly means ”to feel together” or ”to empathize”. I talk about consent because I believe that learning how to say no and how to listen to ourselves and others supports wild, courageous, and subtle dancing. It supports emotional and social safety. To me, consent at its core, is about care, not about restricting others, but about taking care of ourselves and each other in a collective space. For me consent starts from feeling comfortable in your body and feeling like you can stay true to your needs and wishes without fearing that they are not heard or accepted. In a dance, it would mean that all dancers have agency and freedom to suggest things. 

I wrote my master’s thesis of Dance Pedagogy on how to teach touch, and that’s how my specific interest in consent started to take the form of words, lectures, writing, and teaching (Noticing Power Relations in Teaching Touch, MA Thesis, HfMDK, 2021). I continued to work with the topic 2021-2022 in Iceland University of Arts with the final piece Take This Touch Inside Your Body that consisted of a performance and a collection of poems on the topic of touch and finally I did a certificate programme to become an Intimacy Choreographer in 2024-2025. My CI practice started in 2005 and I have been teaching CI since 2010. 

I am aware that often bringing exercises or questions of consent into the dance studio or community can create tension, nervousness or too much carefulness as people are learning. We learn to notice our boundaries and to communicate them, and to accept the boundaries of others and this requires a lot of courage. It is a vulnerable place to be, but I believe that once we get through that initial sticky and difficult space of nervous giggles, we can start to be more brave, wild and safe. 

Consent has been a struggle for me in my CI dance practice since I started dancing at 18 years old. At the time, possibly because of my age and appearance, often men enjoyed pushing me around during CI dances. It was fun for them as I was flexible and eager to please. Occasionally it was fun for me too but when I started pushing back, they sometimes got upset. I had to explain why I didn’t want to go where they were leading me and through this I had to create very clear ways of saying no and stating my boundaries in dances and take in the push-back – and the backlash – that came with it. This is partly why this topic is personal for me. I also have had experiences where I have crossed the boundaries of other people and I believe this happens to all of us. Manipulation and control can be used in dances as a play, but it needs to be consensual and come through listening. Communication in dance can move consensually through listening, following, finding mutuality, suggesting things, offering, slightly bending the will of the other, to directing and to even manipulating and controlling. 

Consent Culture

Creating a culture of consent means we all are free to say no and set boundaries without fear of being punished, not just the overt punishment, but subtle disappointment or withdrawal of warmth.

In the contact improvisation community, the body of agreements and guidelines around consent has been growing for some years. If you search online, you’ll find a lot of material on how to behave in jams and how to say no. The aim is to make CI spaces braver and safer while not perfectly safe, as no one can assure that. I believe that CI is a high-risk, high-reward activity as we’re engaging with living bodies, touch, and unpredictability.

Erin Manning writes: 

“I cannot predict the effect on my skin, since I cannot know your reaction to my touch and vice versa. This is what makes touch so difficult to embody comprehensively, what makes touch ungraspable and indefinable in and of itself.” (Manning 2007 : 57)

In CI, we often don’t know what we’re consenting to when you begin a dance. That’s part of the risk and improvisation. That’s why it’s essential to remain in a state of response rather than reaction. The word response-ability is important here. Karen Barad, Judith Butler, and Erin Manning all use it in the context of feminist new materialisms, affect theory, queer theory, and performance studies. It’s about being response-able—able to respond rather than react. For me, that means staying aware of what’s happening in the moment, of whether I’m reacting or I am able to choose my response.

From Five to Six Pillars of Consent

The five pillars of consent with the acronym CRISP are made by the Intimacy Directors and Coordinators (IDC) and they are originally derived from the Planned Parenthood consent acronym FRIES. I have changed them a little to work for the practice of Contact Improvisation and added one extra S.

C – Clear (or Considered)
Consent should be explicit, clear, and considered. In CI, this is tricky, because improvisation is at its core, unpredictable. How could we propose and offer as clearly as possible and leave space for the other person to respond in however they do?  What should be clear is the context of dance. The situation is about dancing together, and not something else like looking for romantic or sexual partners. 

R – Revocable
You can change your mind at any time. Consent is not a permanent yes and Contact Improvisation dance is a series of moments of new agreements, again and again. Consent isn’t granted once but it emerges step by step, through constant re-clarification. Sometimes, I don’t have a clear yes or no. My consent can change over time. Something that felt okay in the moment might feel wrong later. And that’s valid. Giving ourselves permission to sit in that gray area is part of this practice.

I – Informed

You should know what you’re agreeing to. This can include knowing if someone has an injury or is feeling unwell, or maybe whether they understand consent practices.

S – Specific
Consent is not transferable, it is context and person specific. Just because someone danced one way with another person doesn’t mean they’ll want the same with you. Just because you danced and touched a person in a certain way in the jam, it doesn’t mean a similar touch is ok outside the jam space.

P – Participatory
Maybe it’s not about enthusiasm but about mutual engagement. Both people should have agency in decision-making. Sometimes we dance together to learn, to experience, to research or to figure something out. Sometimes it´s uncomfortable or difficult, but maybe we can still consent to it. 

S – Sober (or Capable)
This refers not just to substances but to emotional and mental states: overwhelm, fatigue, and other kinds of intensity. Am  I capable of making decisions right now? Am I capable of taking care of myself physically, emotionally, and socially right now? This can have a lot of space to explore, because sometimes it is enjoyable to dance while being tired, but we need to have the capability to regulate our dance to fit our state. Like Nita Little says: “Move at the speed of your attention.”, or “Move at the speed of your partner’s attention”. 

As I state in my thesis, power dynamics influence our ability to make choices and to consent: age, gender, race, ability, social status, class, trauma, confidence, body type, neurodiversity and so on. Which one of us feels they can say no without fear? Who feels welcome to make choices they need?

Check in!

Checking in with ourselves and with others is the key! If I’m unsure whether someone wants to dance with me or do a particular lift, I can ask, even in non-verbal spaces. Boundaries and comfort are always valid topics for communication. This can be also understood as You can ask yourself, if you are not sure what feels good for you. 

Community Care and Structures

Structures matter. When something goes wrong, is there someone you can turn to? Can it be anonymous? Are there ways to address conflict?

There’s a common belief that communities naturally push out harmful people and that the social ecosystem self-corrects. And sometimes it does. But even more often, it’s hurt people who disappear: quietly, without explanation, never coming back. And sometimes the one crossing lines is the teacher, the organizer, the person with the most social capital. That’s why we can’t rely on organic exclusion alone. We want to welcome people in, even when they mess up, not simply push them out. Inclusion and education have to be part of consent culture.

So the question becomes: what would it look like to have real structures of community care? Systems where someone can report harm or seek support without having to directly confront the person who hurt them? Safe, accessible, low-barrier pathways toward healing and accountability?

Part of that is normalizing aftercare, not just after intense physical experiences, but after conflict too. Mistakes happen. Lines get crossed. That doesn’t make someone a monster; it makes them human. What matters is having the tools to acknowledge it, to talk about it, to learn and repair. That capacity to stay in a relationship through difficulty is one of the most radical things a community can cultivate.

One small but powerful practice: say no in low-stakes ways. Redirect a touch. Reposition someone’s hand. Name what you want. These micro-moments of boundary-setting build a culture where limits are woven into the dance itself and not treated as interruptions to it.

And through all of this, we need compassion for others, and for ourselves. This is tender, edgy territory. The fact that we’re here, having this conversation, already takes courage.

Saying no is a gift. It builds trust. It opens the door to something deeper and more real. When someone says no to you, they’re offering you their honesty and that is precious. 

Let’s continue these conversations, and keep creating a culture of care and consent in our dancing communities!