ABSTRACT
The interval act of the 2010 contest in Oslo, Norway, featured a highly choreographed spectacle of mass-participation musicking. This flash-mob dance sequence utilized both pre-taped and live-action dancing that was carefully rehearsed, filmed, and edited to create a vision of an enthusiastic and highly pluralistic pan-European belonging. The Norwegian hip-hop duo Madcon (Tshawer Baqwa and Yosef Wolde-Mariam) sang “Glow” in the arena as the audience joined in with dance moves they had learned from YouTube tutorials. Thousands of fans could “Share the Moment” by dancing along, and the message of this musicking encounter was clearly articulated by the song’s lyrics: “Though we all feel different, you are just like me.” Two competing identity paradigms played against each other for maximum effect in this performance: participants could experience both European sameness and national difference simultaneously, no matter who was participating or where they were sharing this moment across the continent.
