kaijo caggins

kaijo caggins is a Black trans performance artist, educator, and doula working at the edges of improvisation, somatics, and pleasure. Their performance practices move through the body as archive, oracle, glitch, and channel of disorientation — inviting audiences toward sensation as a form of knowledge. kaijo’s work lingers in the unstable and euphoric, tracing how the body bends time within the frame of refusal. Living and creating on Nacotchtank and Piscataway land, kaijo is in ongoing relation with local CI dancers, multidisciplinary artists, families, and the rivers that shape the region’s voice. Their facilitation of Contact Improvisation centers the body’s capacity to listen through weight, negotiate care through shared momentum, and generate new relational worlds through risk. For kaijo, CI is a method for unlearning dominance and cultivating queer futurity.

kaijo pursues his graduate work in Women’s, Gender + Sexuality Studies at The George Washington University, and his scholarly research moves through Black mysticism and interiority, Black feminist thought, and Afrofuturist methods for change — looking to land-based practices, performance studies, and embodied inquiry as guides. kaijo engages how Black life generates knowledge beyond the limits of the archive, and their work asks how scholarship might circulate through breath and experiencing rather than solely through text. In 2026, kaijo presented at the Southern Connecticut State University’s WGSS Conference, offering a talk on hacking linearity and refusal through sonic rhythm. This presentation explored how sound disrupts normative temporalities and opens portals for Black trans fugitivity. Through rhythm, they considered refusal as a kinetic somatic practice that rearranges the conditions of the present. 

Outside of the studio and classroom, kaijo is continuously learning from his dog (Reese), practicing kitchen magic, and collecting vinyl records that shape the soundscape of his home space.