– (edited January 2026)
– a living document
Skiing On Skin Festival is a temporary, intentional community focused on the practice and research of Contact Improvisation. These guidelines are intended to support this focus, highlighting community care and individual responsibility.
Safety
Everybody is responsible for the safety of the dance floor. This includes yourself, your dance partners and the collective dance space we are creating together.
CI can be physically, mentally, and emotionally demanding, and you will be interacting with dancers who differ from you in skill, ability, interest and experience.
Move at the pace of your attention, noticing your impact on the space and the other dancers.
Be mindful of the amount of space around you. Adjust your dance to stay safe.
Stay hydrated, stay aware, stay awake – if you find yourself spacing out, please take a break and observe for a while.
If you experience or witness unsafe or harassing behavior, or something that just doesn’t feel right, please speak up. Organizers, especially the named support persons, are available for support.
Consent & Boundaries
Contact improvisation is outside of usual societal norms for touch; do not assume that your partner is skilled at setting boundaries and establishing consent. Do not assume that touch is always welcome. Feel free to communicate verbally with your dance partners at any time, especially about consent. It’s always ok to say “No” or “Stop”.
You can leave a dance at any time, no explanation or apology needed.
This is not a space for cruising, sexual agendas or acting on sexual desires.
Bodywork is welcome as long as it is consensual and not in the way of active dancing in space.
Spatial Awareness
The floor is your first partner, and at all times, regardless of who is physically touching whom, the whole room is in a dance together.
While you may dance at any speed you like, the dance floor is a “no parking” zone: move non-dance interactions to the edges of the room.
Sound and text can be part of the dance. However, please keep loud social conversation outside the dance space.
Please keep cell phone usage off the dance floor, and do not photograph or video other participants without their consent.
Cleanliness
Practice good personal hygiene. Cover warts and wounds well, wash yourself frequently, and please don’t come to the jam if you know you have a contagious infection.
Kids
Kids are welcome to dance in the jam, as long as they are, in their own way, engaging in the practice of contact improvisation. Dancing children need an actively responsible grown-up with them on the dance floor who takes care for their safety, is mindful of their impact on the room, and is open to feedback.
We ask that you allow children to engage according to their own will and curiosity, and respect their boundaries: don’t assume you can pick someone up just because they are smaller than you, don’t assume they want to be tickled, etc.
Navigating Complexity and Unity
Let’s bravely dance together also with new people and let’s embrace the unknown together!
The jam does not exist in a vacuum: power structures of the outside world are present in the room as well as the unifying emergent field of togetherness, and this all impacts our interactions, our relations and our dances.
We cannot ignore issues that separate or bring us together and thus impact our practice, both in terms of who is or is not in the room, and in terms of power dynamics or emergent unity between the people dancing.
Our intention is to foster awareness, accessibility, diversity, and dialogue about CI, building a strong community that can hold complexity, navigate conflict, celebrate diversity as well as celebrate unity and support the dance that brings all of us here.
There are as many ways to dance Contact as there are dancers. Thank you for bringing your dance! We wish for this to be a time of fruitful exploration, creative collaboration and play.
With care and curiosity,
The SOS Organizing Team