Keywords: Community, Participatory dance

The paper aims to situate the dance practices in contemporary Svinița (Serbian: Svinica) within the surrounding regions. During the short time the research group spent in Svinița, we attended and participated in two evening dance events. These events were in many ways typical of community festival occasions found across the Balkan region, consisting of a live music band and space for social dancing, something I, as a participant and researcher, have been familiar with during many years of research in Romania and other Balkan communities. However, for all of the study group visiting Svinița, the dance practices were not completely as expected, the question is how typical or how different is Svinița compared to the locality. The subject of this paper is to consider the Svinița dance event in relationship to the local area and the wider region with the aim to contextualise our observations in the locality.