267 10 1 See Alexeyef (2009), Balme (1998), Condevaux (2011), Connell and Gibson (2008), Desmond (1997, 1999), Dick (2014), Hayward (2001), Imada (2011, 2012), Kaeppler (1977), Kahn (2011a, 2011b), Kole (2010), Senft (1999), Stillman (1988), Tatar (1987), and Waitt and Dufy (2010). Touristic Encounters: Imag(in)ing Tahiti and Its Performing Arts Jane Freeman Moulin Te twenty-frst 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 Pacifc 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 culture- specifc displays of social/economic/artistic interactions rendered audible and visible. Despite the long-established use of Pacifc 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 confuence of tourism and Pacifc dance. 1 In particular, a performer’s viewpoint of how tourism afects artistic performance or its participants is minimal or noticeably missing. Larsen and Urry state that ‘the tourist gaze is “mutual”, where the eyes of gazers