Dancing the Hetero(normative) Cityscape

Drawing upon preliminary findings from my ethnographic study of the leisure dance practices of artist-identified youth in Vancouver, Canada, this presentation discusses social dancing as intimately linked to urban geography and identity. I explore Vancouver’s Granville entertainment district as a mainstream and aggressively (hetero)normative space actively constructed and regulated by the city. I then examine how some youth react (albeit problematically) to this construction through the spatial and embodied practice of dancing.