Paper short abstract:

In this paper, I shall explore, through mainly online ethnography, how flash mob dancing constitutes a form of embodied cosmopolitanism since performance enables participants to be involved in a singular event and simultaneously to connect to the global through online broadcasting on You Tube and identification with an international genre.

Paper long abstract:

Transcending the divides of race, class, and nation and blurring the boundaries between the political and the commercial, flash mob dancing may be conceived as a truly cosmopolitan postcolonial dance genre in that it takes place in urban sites across the world. Through the collective performance of apparently spontaneous choreography, it emerges in public places as unplanned spectacle, creating its own stage through disrupting the quotidian. In this paper, I shall explore, through mainly online ethnography, how flash mob dancing constitutes a form of embodied cosmopolitanism since performance enables participants to be involved in a singular event and simultaneously to connect to the global through online broadcasting on You Tube and identification with an international genre. Through a detailed analysis of the dynamics of flash mob dancing, which transforms the crowd into spectators and the humdrum into an event, I shall address the idea that there may be a transcultural aesthetics of the event, not determined by the constraints of Western hegemonic canons.