In this article, we focus on understanding how three Contact Improvisation practitioners sustain a dance practice that shuns institutionalization and values the unexpected, the emergent, and experimentation. Thus, we describe how their careers with this dance relate to different aspects of their lives and enable the development of unique skills. Taking as background the debates on autonomy and precariousness, we complement a perspective that analyzes the art/work relationship in a holistic way -not isolated the economic/ labour aspect of affective, relational, and daily dimensions- with the concepts of Dewey's experience and Anthropogenesis of Ingold, through a proposal that we call vitalist. In the reconstruction of these three trajectories, we observe two elements: (a) The tendency to cross established borders and articulate knowledge from various fields; (b) the centrality of somatic experience as a source of knowledge, where Contact Improvisation appears as a method of experimentation. We propose that the expression "dancing life" helps to reconstruct the trajectories of these dancers through an alternative style.