Touristic Encounters: Imag(in)ing Tahiti and Its Performing Arts

Abstract

The twenty-first century has brought a palpable, new omnipresence of tourism to French Polynesia-as the focus of government hopes for an economic engine to ease the current monetary woes of the country and as a subject that touches the daily lives of island residents. Of vital economic importance to Pacific Island nations, tourism is also of core interest to scholars in a range of academic disciplines, including ethnomusicologists who view touristic presentations involving performative arts as culturespecific displays of social/economic/artistic interactions rendered audible and visible. Despite the long-established use of Pacific music and dance in the presentation of culture for outsiders, however, relatively few scholars (and even fewer ethnomusicologists and dance ethnologists) have turned an analytical eye to the confluence of tourism and Pacific dance.