In 2003, UNESCO adopted a new international convention to safeguard “intangible cultural heritage,” defined as epics, tales, music, rituals, celebrations, craftsmanship, and systems of folk knowledge about medicine, astronomy and the natural world. This intangible cultural heritage is regarded by many scholars and cultural activists as vital to the well-being of traditional communities.

For a performative heritage to have and keep its effect, it must not only admit change but reinvent itself through constant iteration. Thus, there are issues of preservation and documentation as well as interpretation and the degree to which a performance today represents the values of a larger cultural identity, past or present. This workshop explores the non-material, intangible character of heritage by focusing on the human body as a vehicle for memory, movement, and sound. Among the embodied performances considered are dance, the globalization of music among diaspora communities, theater, ritual, lore, and the transmission of oral literature and its changing audiences. The workshop considers the problems (such as authenticity, intellectual property rights, supra-local interference, how to preserve something that is, by its very nature, unstable and dynamic) and possibilities (such as revival and revitalization) of implementation of the new UNESCO convention through case studies drawn from around the world.

Organized by D. Fairchild Ruggles and Helaine Silverman.