In this talk, Michael Kimmel will put interaction under a magnifying glass. In an introduction to the fine-grained analysis of interaction skills, he will build upon examples from tango dance, martial arts and bodywork. “Experts in these fields perform remarkable feats with fluidity, ease and speed, while negotiating what they do in the moment. I focus on resources allowing for flexible improvisation. Drawing on the newest resources in the field of social cognition – mainly from embodied, enactive, extended, situated, and distributed cognition – I will discuss the virtues of a microgenetic, systemic and multi-timescale perspective. (Doing a “microgenetic analysis” means analysing “thin slices” of interaction and how it develops into a coordinated and meaningful whole.) In the talk’s first part, basic concepts such “co-regulation”, “joint action”, and “joint attention” are introduced. In the second part, we’ll explore the skills of experts, including perceptual tricks, modes of attention as well as action repertoires.”