Local versus world culture: intangible and tangible cultural heritage on Taketomi Island

Dance has become an important target for cultural identity or community intensification. It contains both the tangible and intangible aspects of group life, which can be manifested in the objectification of cultural body, however in a processual fashion. This paper presents the specific example of a temporary project on the Island of Taketomi in Okinawa, in which locals, not as a group but as an assemblage, intended to promote the most important annual ritual and performing arts, that is, the most important local culture unto the list of world heritage . The presentation of the ritual and its dances followed a certain fashion of cultural aesthetics that embraces the formal and the spiritual. Discussion and debates between external experts and local exponents highlight the issues of representation and interpretation.