The Tangible and Intangible: Dance and the Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage

This article returns to issues raised in the pages of this journal regarding dance in the context of UNESCO’s 2003 adoption of the Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage.1 Bakka and Karoblis’ article published in 20212 refuted the proposal made by Iacono and Brown in 20163 to replace the Convention’s term ‘Intangible Cultural Heritage’ (ICH) with the concept of ‘living cultural heritage’. However, Bakka and Karoblis’ response was written in the spirit of ‘a discursive unity’4 and, sharing in this spirit, I aim to consider both articles with the aim of highlighting how the discourses surrounding safeguarding ICH and those that consider dance as a significant part of culture might inform one another.