Royona Mitra is the author of Akram Khan: Dancing New Interculturalism. Her research examines systems of oppression in dance and performance cultures at the intersections of bodies, social power regimes, and choreography as resistance. She contributes to the fields of diaspora and performance, South Asian dance and performance cultures, critical dance studies and performance studies.

• Acknowledgments Preface Introduction: Unmaking Contact Chapter 1Contact as Caste Justice: Theenda Theenda (2018) by Akila and The Touch of Death Chapter 2Contact as Reframing Sociality: Rorschach Touch (2018) by Diya Naidu and <"Normalizing Touch> " Chapter 3Contact as Ecological Relationality: Mirror Within (2022) by Nahid Siddiqui and Shakila Maan and Touch Without Tactility Chapter 4Contact as Adda: Critical Encounters in #KAATENAHINKATTE Instareel (2020) by LaWhore Vagistan and Digital Touching Afterwords: Against Conclusions References

Innovative, provocative, and insightful, Unmaking Contact explores the liberatory and oppressive potentials of physical, intersubjective interaction in contemporary South Asian and diaspora choreography. Fluidly written and skillfully argued, this book considers contact as both literal and metaphorical connection, examining choreographers' use of touch as it navigates concerns of caste, gender, faith, sexuality, and more-than-human relations. As the first study of its kind to address touch and contact in South Asian choreographies, this book mobilizes South Asian epistemologies, aesthetics and critical theory in the interest of unsettling casteism and other oppressive hierarchies.