Keywords: Participatory dance

I examine dancing practices in the urban context of the city of Timișoara which supports a lively ‘local’ music and dance scene. In addition to the music and dance from the plain area around Timișoara, this ‘local’ scene includes music and dance that is displaced from its origins in the separate rural Banat mountain ethnographic zone. Although both the mountains and the plain are considered to be in ‘Banat’, and the inhabitants of both identify themselves as ‘bănățene’, I justify that this can be considered a ‘displaced’ tradition in terms of ethnography and history. I look at the inclusion Banat mountain dancing through the city event organisation and the dance knowledge held by participants in Timișoara. I propose that the visibility and the dancing knowledge provided by the influential dance teachers has secured the representation of Banat identity by using Banat mountain music and dance in in the city context.