ABSTRACT
This chapter seeks to explore a contemporary performance arena where the liminal space the anthropologist Victor Turner believed once belonged to tribal ritual can be located – namely, that of underground dance music and its performance at raves and clubs. Following the processual model initially established by Arnold van Gennep (1960) and later refined by Turner, I argue that ritual transformation in rave and club events is made possible by both the spatialization and performance of music and the ways in which participants negotiate liminality throughout the course of events. Drawing from a brief ethnographic case study of Toronto’s Turbo Niteclub, and by focusing on the interstitial moments of music and dance, I investigate how liminally located interactions between performers and audiences generate potentially transformative experiences.
