Mass mating dance in Utrecht for Valentine’s Day

Contemporary British artist Marcus Coates from London is asking single men to go to Utrecht Central Station at 4 pm on 14 February, which is next to city hall, to perform a mating dance. On a Tuesday when everyone works and goes to school.

Coates is planning to organise a makeshift dating show with the men doing the mating dance of the Eurasian woodcock, which involves running a certain route around the Netherlands’ biggest train station.

In the mean time, single women will be waiting at city hall to pick out a man by calling out to them, just in time to correspond with the mating season of the Eurasian woodcock.

Let’s unpack this, shall we? The first thing that came to mind is also the first comment I read: it’s heterosexist. Yeah, it’s about the birds and all, but still. And who’s paying for this? Won’t it be really busy at rush hour? And is this being done in the Netherlands so Coates gets a free trip over? Too many questions and not many answers in sight.

(Link: rtvutrecht, Photo of train by Flickr user UggBoy hearts UggGirl, some rights reserved)

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 19th, 2017 at 1:26 pm and is filed under Animals, Art. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Tags: birds, Utrecht, Valentine's Day