The Dynamics of an Expanding Friendship. Community Making in the Streets of Porto Marghera

Abstract

Margh’era. Un Secolo In Corsa (2017/18) is a choreographic project that managed to temporally transform a neglected industrial site into a place of community bonding. Devised by the Venetian female choreographer Laura Boato, it involved more than one hundred performers and an even larger audience number. As this urban performance remained confined to the area of Veneto in Northern Italy, this text attempts to explore what can be learned from this choreographic event in order to enhance our understanding of community (through) dance. How and why is a community is built? Paying attention to the “common” that binds together a community of diverse people (Day, 2006), augmented cultural citizenship (Stevenson, 2003), evolving feeling of locality (Appadurai, 1996) and shared “now-ness” are the basic concepts that this short paper discusses.