Posthuman beneath the skin: From the dark phenomenology of fascia to the material semiotics of contact improvisation

This article develops a posthuman account of meaning-making in contact improvisation by integrating dark phenomenology, fascia research and material semiotics. It begins by reframing weight sharing as a dark phenomenon: an inherently indeterminate, proprioceptive experience in which self and other intermingle beneath the skin through the sensory and structural properties of the fascia. Drawing on Karen Barad’s agential realism, the article argues that dancers’ agencies emerge through intra-action, not prior to it, grounding contact improvisation in a material entanglement that spans physiology and gravity. The second half critiques classical Saussurean and Peircean semiotics for overprivileging language and representation, proposing instead that the sensorimotor schemas enacted in dance function as non-arbitrary, embodied signs. Through this material semiotics, contact improvisation appears as a site for posthuman subjectivity, where bodies think through movement and enact forms of relational intelligence aligned with Jaime del Val’s concept of Body Intelligence.