What is Women’s Touch? & upcoming dates

Embodiment – Community – Develop self-enquiry and agency – Be in touch – Share reflection + experiences + food

Upcoming dates:

July 12, 2026- Community as a relational process

November 22, 2026 – Guest facilitator: Vanio Papadelli

Book here

What is Women’s Touch?
Women’s Touch is a workshop-lab curated by Marie Chabert. She invites dance artists, movement practitioners and critical theorists to share their practices and co-facilitate a day of collective exploration.

The lab invites women, non-binary and gender non-conforming (GNC) people to engage with touch-based movement practices—including Contact Improvisation, somatics and improvisation—in a supportive and reflective context. It aims to empower participants to claim agency within these practices and challenge the patriarchal norms that often shape our experience of touch, bodies and interaction. Alongside embodied exploration, there is room for collective reflection and conversation.

The intention is to cultivate trust, shared language and mutual care, so participants feel able to take risks, be vulnerable and connect with one another. Rather than simply creating safety, the lab asks how we might build the conditions in which we can truly thrive together.

Who is this for?
This lab is for anyone curious about exploring touch and embodied communication, and about how our bodies carry, reproduce and can transform patterns of bias, power and relational habits.

While the lab is rooted in Contact Improvisation, the questions it raises reach far beyond it. Participants from backgrounds including dance, theatre, dance therapy, education and academic research have found ways to integrate the experience into their own practices.

The lab is open to all levels.

Past themes and guests:

5th edition- Community as a relational Process with Manuela Albrecht and Marie Chabert – May 2026

Weaving between movement scores and moments of shared reflection, participants are invited to experience connection in and out of contact using yarns, a soft fibrous material used for crochet.
https://manualbrecht5.wixsite.com/manualbrecht/

3rd/4th editions-Refining Nonverbal Communication in Contact Improvisation with the Laban movement analyst Claudia Richli and Marie Chabert – March & June 2025

The workshop addresses touch and non-verbal communication using Laban Movement Analysis (LMA)
Claudia Richli Instagram : @move_your_emotions

2nd edition-(Not) Taking up Space: Voicing our Movement in a Patriarchal World with Chrys Papaioannou and Marie Chabert, June 2024

Marie facilitate a warm-up based on ‘challenging roles in CI’, which will lead us into a Contact Impro jam.

She then invites the critical theorist and activist Dr Chrys Papaioannou (they/she) to facilitate a discussion circle on the relationship between Contact Improvisation, feminism and gender.

https://www.chryspapaioannou.com

1st edition-Women’s touch: a somatic journey into CI, in London and Freiburg with Marie Chabert, March 2024

This nurturing space offers a safe yet exploratory environment for women to be in touch with themselves and others, as an alternative to mixed-gender Contact Improvisation jams.