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

• Published in: Dance Research Journal
• Main Author: Gerecke, Alana
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Cambridge University Press (CUP) 2023
• Subjects: Visual Arts and Performing Arts; Canada; First Nations
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0149767723000220; https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/S0149767723000220

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.