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Crowded White Spaces: Dîner en Blanc and the Place-Based Contingencies of Choreography

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 September 2023

Alana Gerecke
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Abstract

This spatial and contextual approach to the performance of assembly takes Dîner en Blanc, an annual pop-up picnic, as a case study. Ethnographic and choreographic analyses of the 2018 picnic event in Vancouver, Canada, ground a critique of the dynamics of site specificity and host/guest relations that drive this local expression of a global event. Drawing on a range of performance and decolonial theorists, this place-based movement analysis of the event foregrounds the recolonizing implications of staging aesthetically whitewashed culinary choreographies on the unceded and traditional territories of the Squamish, Musqueam, and Tsleil-Waututh First Nations.

Keywords

expanded choreographyflash mobplace-based performancesite-specificwhiteness
Type
Article
Information
Dance Research Journal , Volume 55 , Special Issue 2: Assembly, Gathering and Being with Dance , August 2023 , pp. 28 - 43
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2023. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Dance Studies Association

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