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‘In dance we trust’: comparing trance-dance parties among secular and Orthodox Israeli youth

Abstract Israel is arguably a place where music-centred ‘trance-dance’ parties have attained their highest degree of national/cultural prominence, with these events being extremely popular in secular communities and even among Orthodox youth. Based on findings from ethnographic research, the article compares the core features – settings, participants and conduct – of trance parties for secular and Orthodox Israeli youth and examines the functions they perform for each group of partygoers. The findings point to variances in the cultural and personal needs that participation in trance parties fulfils for these disparate communities, which, accordingly, are reflected in their contrastive features. At the same time, both communities of partygoers paradoxically reproduce the very same attitudes and practices their participation intends to challenge, demonstrating that, unlike in other countries, the consumption of psychedelic electronic dance music culture in Israel is essentially devoid of subversive intentions.