From the Kitchen to the Stage: the Recontextualization of Set Dancing in
St. John’s, Newfoundland

Set (square) dance, a traditional Newfoundland dance style, was primarily performed in homes and at local community events. As a “dying” dance form, there is a movement within the folk arts community of St. John’s to revive and continue the dance form. Individual visions of this revival have taken different forms. This paper will focus on two efforts to continue the tradition of Newfoundland set dance. The first is a performance group comprised of members of the folk arts community in St. John’s, who dance recreationally as a group, occasionally performing at folk festivals and teaching workshops. The other is a tourist event, aimed at teaching set dance to anyone and everyone who is interested in learning. These divergent approaches have resulted in a blurring of lines between dancer and audience, as well as between the performative and participatory elements of the dance form. Set dance, then, takes on a theatricality that is quite different from both its traditional context as well as conventional notions of performance. This paper examines both these dance events ethnographically, focusing on the recontextualization of set dance from an esoteric locale (the Newfoundland kitchen) to an exoteric situation (as a cultural commodity), and the changes that result.