This article focuses on an analysis of ways in which conflicts between dancing as an act of solidarity, a tool for self-fulfillment, or as a form of an interpretative transformation have been played out in practicing dancing derived from different “African” cultures within a Swedish context. This period embraces African-American theatrical jazz dance during the 1960s and the more contemporary interest in dances from West African countries. The examples articulate modes of cultural appropriation. The question raised is whether a focus on embodied experience of dancing can subvert the practice of appropriation, or if the two approaches are contradictory.

This article examines the practice of the Danish K-pop (Korean pop) cover dance crew CODE9 as an example of the rapid cultural exchange on the Internet that reshapes the diffusion of dance styles and ideas. CODE9 demonstrates K-pop as a “migratory dance practice,” forming a transnational dancing community with modern technology at its center. By adapting and embodying K-pop, CODE9 creates a “Thirdspace” in between reality and fantasy, between being oneself and being a Korean idol. With CODE9, K-pop moves in and out of Denmark, through the practice of watching, learning, performing, and then circulating dance online.

This article discusses dissemination of dances in and out of Sweden, and the dancing communities these processes create. The examples are the African-American Lindy Hop, which originated in New York City, and the polska, a couple dance considered to be the number one Swedish folk dance. Both dances were once used in local community dancing, while today they belong to dancing communities in many places around the world.

Contemporary halling, seen in theatrical dance works by the Norwegian choreogaphers Hallgrim Hansegaard and Sigurd Johan Heide, exists in a fluid interplay between traditional dance and influences from other cultures. This article examines how typical halling moves are negotiated and “remixed” through practices taking place inside and outside of the Nordic sphere. Hansegaard and Heide can be seen as representatives of “wayfinding artists,” influenced by migrant practices through moving, “wayfinding” in and out of the Nordic region.

This article examines dance pieces premiered in the Nordic countries at the height of the Syrian refugee crisis in 2015. Framed by the heated debates on current immigration policies, as well as prevailing tropes of a theater of migration and the figure of “the migrant,” the analysis centers on the potential for creating spaces of resistance in the encounter between choreographic performance and spectators. Drawing on analytical concepts such as migratory aesthetics and choreographic agency, the focus is on the interrelationship between the choreographic articulations of experience of migration and their materialization before an audience.