Contagious and Unexpected Moments as Gateways to Dancing Playfully Together: Students Creating Intervening Spaces

Research on creative dance education has indicated that students can take risks and improvise when the teacher relinquishes control through an open and explorative approach. I add to the discussion by exploring the unexpected and spontaneous episodes when teaching dance improvisation in settings outside dance education. Based on empirical material from a design-based research project conducted within the Danish bachelor’s degree program in social education, I analyze three episodes where students take the initiative and use their bodies and voices to play essential roles in creating sensuous, repetitive, and humorous group formations. I argue that these episodes can be understood through philosophical and sociological conceptualizations such as sociability, contagion, affectivity, crowds, and laughter and that students can explore playful movement through various contagious “ripple effect” processes. These moments are a kind of significant everyday playful choreography that is a beneficial skill for social educators involving embodied creativity.