Joyful encounters: Dance, touch, and embodied ethics in times of COVID‐19

Sara Biglieri

Gender, Work and Organization, 2025, vol. 32, issue 3, 1349-1365

Abstract: This article explores the practice of Contact Improvisation during the COVID‐19 pandemic, focusing on how dance serves as a means of repair. Drawing on Erin Manning's posthumanist philosophy, woven into both the theoretical and embodied practice of dance, it envisions touch as a social‐relational bond capable of opening pathways to affective intensities, particularly the experience of joy. Employing and experimenting with affective ethnography, I explore the ethico‐political aspects of touch, extending ongoing discussions of ethics as deeply embodied. Specifically, I show how this exploration could lead to theorizing an “embodied ethic of repair”, enabling future‐oriented response‐ability and reclaiming joy as an affective force for navigating forthcoming bio‐political, social, and environmental challenges in and for organizations.

Date: 2025
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