This session of the Dance Center of Columbia College Chicago’s What Is Contemporary? Sympsoium is both a talk and a workshop. Dr. Ayo Walker’s paper delves into common misconceptions about contemporary dance styles that loosely imitate street dance and the mindful necessity of properly crediting contemporary dance. Oftentimes acting as a “catch all” category, contemporary dance assumes ownership of any/all styles of dance rather than as an approach to making something new by repurposing what already exists. Marquita De Jesus investigates how movement practices outside of codified technique function as vital spaces of resistance, cultural transmission, and choreographic innovation within contemporary dance. Her embodied inquiry invites us to reconsider contemporary dance not as a fixed genre, but as an evolving space where difference, vulnerability, and disruption can generate new movement languages and possibilities for the future.