Mobilising Heritage. Dance, Theatre, and Performance in the Age of (In)Tangibility (European Journal of Theatre and Performance)

European Journal of Theatre and Performance (EJTP)

CALL FOR PROPOSALS

Mobilising Heritage: Dance, Theatre, and Performance in the Age of (In)Tangibility
 
Guest editors : Timmy De Laet, Franz Anton Cramer, Vicky Kämpfe, and Dunja Njaradi

Proposal deadline : 25 January 2026.

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The past two decades have witnessed a profound shift in global heritage discourse. Since the adoption of UNESCO’s 2003 Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH), the idea of living heritage has expanded beyond monuments and artefacts to encompass practices, skills, and expressions rooted in communities. This turn toward the intangible and communal dimensions of heritage, however, also exposed deep tensions between preservation and change, expert authority and bottom-up participation, or institutional policies and bodily practices. These frictions are particularly visible in dance and the performing arts, where heritage is literally embodied, enacted, and reimagined through practice. Once treated as fleeting and immaterial, dance, theatre, and performance now stand at the centre of heritage debates. In what this special issue terms the age of (in)tangibility, the performing arts are recognised as intangible heritage precisely as they are rendered tangible through documentation, digitisation, and policy frameworks, revealing a constitutive tension between embodied, relational knowledge that exists only in practice and the material, institutional forms through which heritage is named, governed, and sustained.

In various cultural contexts, artists and communities are increasingly engaging with heritage in inventive ways: from reconstructing lost choreographies to reviving local social dances, reinterpreting indigenous and diasporic practices for new audiences, or mobilising historical forms for contemporary political struggles. These bottom-up initiatives coincide with a growing institutional recognition of dance as heritage, as exemplified by the inclusion of Modern Dance in Germany on UNESCO’s ICH list in 2022. Such developments trouble longstanding distinctions between ‘traditional’ and ‘artistic’ dance (Kwan 2017; Rašić et al. 2024), while also exposing the complex interplay between policy regulations, cultural value, creative innovation, and communal ownership.

For its next special ‘Essays section’ devoted to the theme of dance and performing arts heritage, the European Journal of Theatre and Performance (EJTP) invites scholars, artists, practitioners, and policymakers to interrogate how dance, theatre, and performance has become a testing ground for the contradictions and possibilities of heritage in the twenty-first century (Dekker and Giannachi 2023). How can a living, embodied, and inherently evolving practices as dance, theatre, and performance enter into processes of heritagisation and be ‘safeguarded’? Who determines what is worth preserving, and how do such decisions ascribe value to certain bodies, oeuvres, or legacies while excluding others (Eichler 2021)? How are cultural policies, institutional frameworks, practitioner communities, and digital technologies redefining the boundaries of what counts as heritage, and who has the authority to define and transmit it (Wulf 2024)?

Within heritage studies, scholars have long critiqued what Laurajane Smith has termed the ‘Authorized Heritage Discourse’ (2006), highlighting how heritagisation processes are steered by expert authority and institutional regulation to bestow symbolic and economic value on cultural forms (Kirshenblatt-Gimblett 2004; Smith and Akagawa 2009; Petkovski 2024). Recent debates on ICH further emphasised the performative nature of safeguarding and how it constructs – rather than merely preserves – cultural meaning (Bendix 2009; Hafstein 2009; Haldrup and Bœrenholdt 2015). In the case of dance and the performing arts, heritagisation often tends to prioritise continuity over innovation (Bakka and Karoblis 2021; Carr 2023), transforming dynamic practices into what Zoi Margari (2016) calls ‘intangible monuments’ that risk immobilising creative evolution in the name of safeguarding.

Research in dance, theatre, and performance studies has since some years increasingly addressed questions of heritage, primarily focusing on the role of communities, the tension between preservation and innovation, and the transmission of embodied knowledges (Forment and Stalpaert 2015; Whatley 2022; Bakka and Karoblis 2021; Njaradi 2025; De Laet 2026). Scholars such as Diana Taylor (2003), Mark Franko (2017), and Vicky Kämpfe (2023) have shown how movement and corporeal experience function as sites of epistemic production, while the rise of artistic research and practice-oriented methodologies (Arlander et al. 2018) underscore how performance itself constitutes a form of knowing. The acknowledgement that the body can serve as a repository of cultural memory (Assmann 2024) not only troubles the tangible/intangible divide pertinent to ICH discourses, but also challenges the archival and classificatory logics that underpin institutionalised modes of preservation (Blades et al. 2017; De Laet 2020; Cramer 2010). Additionally, while the rapid expansion of digital technologies and motion databases expand the possibilities for transmitting and accessing dance heritage, they also pose new risks of disembodiment, data obsolescence, and ecological impact (Bench and Elswit 2022; Baillot 2023; Mcdermott and Craith 2025).

In turbulent times marked by political upheaval, climate and refugee crises, increasing militarisation, and resurgent nationalisms, cultural heritage frequently figures as a symbol of national identity, historical continuity, and human excellence (Grau and Gore 2014; Bigenho and Stobart 2016; Felföldi 2018; Rakočević 2020; Fouseki 2021). The conservatist connotations clinging to the notion of heritage also explain why the arts field is sometimes reluctant to embrace the term, even when the most innovative practices acknowledge their indebtedness to history and precursors. More than ever, it becomes urgent to address the imbrication of heritage and politics.

To reflect the heterogenous nature of dance, theatre, and performance heritage, this special issue welcomes contributions in three complementary formats:

(1) Practitioner testimonies invite reflective contributions from artists, choreographers, dancers, heritage workers, archivists, or others who engage with heritage through practice. These texts may articulate how heritage is understood, mobilised, or contested in concrete contexts, and how embodied, experiential, and practice-based knowledges contribute to keeping dance and performance heritage alive.

(2) Scholarly essays invite more academic-oriented contributions that critically inquire into the dynamics of dance and performing arts heritage from disciplinary or interdisciplinary perspectives, including dance, theatre, and performance studies, historical research, ethnography, digital humanities, and heritage studies. These essays may address conceptual, historical, methodological, or empirical questions raised in this call, such as heritagisation processes, transmission and embodiment, value regimes, institutional power, digital mediation, or decolonial and transnational perspectives. We particularly welcome contributions that bridge theory and practice, challenge established epistemic hierarchies or propose new analytical frameworks for understanding dance and performance as living heritage.

(3) Policy papers invite contributions from professionals working at the interface of heritage and governance, including those involved in cultural policy-making, heritage administration, international organisations, and funding bodies at local, national, European, or global levels. These contributions may reflect on the development, implementation, and effects of heritage policies in relation to dance and the performing arts, as well as on the frictions between policy frameworks and lived practices. We especially encourage forward-looking papers that critically assess existing safeguarding models and propose alternative approaches that better account for the processual, embodied, and community-based nature of dance and performing arts heritage.

By bringing these formats together, the special issue seeks to bridge theory, practice, and policy, and to illuminate how dance and performing arts heritage is continuously made – and remade – through movement, negotiation, and collective action.

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PROPOSAL SUBMISSIONS

Proposals should be written in UK English, in MS Word format, and range between 500 and 700 words. Please include a brief bio (max. 100 words). 

Send proposals by email to the guest editors (see contacts below) by 25 January 2026.

Proposals must be based on original, unpublished work not under consideration for publication elsewhere. 

Please specify in which language the article will be submitted. EJTP accepts articles written in the language of the author’s preference. However, authors writing in languages other than English must secure professional proofreading.

If your proposal is accepted, you will be invited to submit a first draft of your article by 15 April 2026. The maximum length of the final article should not exceed 9.000 words (including abstract in English and in at least one additional language, references, author bio, etc.). Submitted articles will undergo double-blind peer review by two anonymous experts.

Prospective authors should make sure their submitted articles are in accordance with the EJTP Author Guidelines, which can be consulted here: https://ejtp.eu/about/submissions.

For more information on the European Journal of Theatre and Performance, please visit: https://ejtp.eu/about.

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SCHEDULE

Proposals: 25 January 2026 (note of acceptance by 5 February 2026)

First drafts: 15 April 2026

Second drafts: 20 May 2026

Peer review outcome: 25 June 2026

Final Drafts: 15 August 2026

Publication: End of September 2026

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CONTACTS

Issue-related inquiries and proposal submissions should be sent to the guest editors:

Timmy De Laet: timmy.delaet@uantwerpen.be

Franz Anton Cramer: facramer@snafu.de  

Vicky Kämpfe: vicky.kaempfe@leuphana.de

Dunja Njaradi: dunjasa82@gmail.com 

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

Arlander, Annette, Bruce Barton, Melanie Dreyer-Lude, and Ben Spatz. 2018. Performance as Research: Knowledge, Methods, Impact (London: Routledge)

Assmann, Aleida. 2024. ‘Archiving the Body: Cultural Memory and the Practice of Intangible Cultural Heritage’, in Materialities in Dance and Performance: Writing, Documenting, Archiving, ed. by Gabriele Klein and Franz Anton Cramer (Bielefeld: transcript Verlag): 192-207 https://doi.org/10.1515/9783839470640-011

Baillot, Anne. 2023. From Handwriting to Footprinting: Text and Heritage in the Age of Climate Crisis (Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers)

Bakka, Egil, and Gediminas Karoblis. 2021. ‘Decolonising or Recolonising Struggles on Cultural Heritage’, Dance Research, 39.2: 247-63 https://doi.org/10.3366/drs.2021.0345  

Bench, Harmony, and Kate Elswit. 2022. ‘Visceral Data for Dance Histories: Katherine Dunham’s People, Places, and Pieces’, TDR: The Drama Review, 66.1: 37-61 https://doi.org/10.1017/S1054204321000708

Bendix, Regina. 2009. ‘Heritage Between Economy and Politics: An Assessment from the Perspective of Cultural Anthropology’, in Intangible Heritage, ed. Laurajane Smith and Natsuko Akagawa (London and New York: Routledge), pp. 253-69

Bigenho, Michelle, and Henry Stobart. 2016. ‘The Devil in Nationalism: Indigenous Heritage and the Challenges of Decolonization’, International Journal of Cultural Property 23.2: 141-66 https://doi.org/10.1017/S0940739116000114

Blades, Hetty, Rosemary E. Kostic Cisneros, and Sarah Whatley. 2017. ‘The Values of Leftovers in Dance Research’, Performance Research, 22.8: 144-52 https://doi.org/10.1080/13528165.2017.1433396

Büscher, Barbara, and Franz Anton Cramer. 2021. Bewegen, Aufzeichnen, Aufheben, Ausstellen: Archivprozesse der Aufführungskünste. Ein Arbeitsbuch (Leipzig: Qucosa) https://doi.org/10.25366/2022.2

Carr, Jane. 2023. ‘The Tangible and Intangible: Dance and the Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage’, Dance Research, 41.1: 66-78 https://doi.org/10.3366/drs.2023.0390  

Cramer, Franz Anton. 2010. ‘Archive as Cultural Heritage: The Digital Monument’, SDHS 2010 Proceedings Dance & Spectacle, 8-11 July 2010, University of Surrey: 69-77 https://sdhs.scripts.mit.edu/proceedings/2010/ [accessed 10 November 2025]

Dekker, Annet, and Gabriella Giannachi (eds.). 2023. Documentation as Art: Expanded Digital Practices (London and New York: Routledge)

De Laet, Timmy. 2026. ‘The Dialectics of Tradition in Dance: Between Continuity and Discontinuity’, in The Oxford Handbook of Dance and Memory, ed. by Susanne Franco and Marina Nordera (New York: Oxford University Press), pp. 427-47

De Laet, Timmy. 2020. ‘Expanding Dance Archives: Access, Legibility, and Archival Participation’, in Dance Research 38.2: 206-29 https://doi.org/10.3366/DRS.2020.0309

Eichler, Jessika. 2021. ‘Intangible Cultural Heritage, Inequalities and Participation: Who Decides on Heritage?’, The International Journal of Human Rights 25.5: 793-814 https://doi.org/10.1080/13642987.2020.1822821

Felföldi, László. 2018. ‘On the Legal and Political Framework of the Folk Dance Revival Movement in Hungary in the Second Half of the Twentieth Century’, in Folklore Revival Movements in Europe Post 1950: Shifting Contexts and Perspectives, ed. by Daniela Stavělová and Theresa Jill Buckland (Prague: Institute of Ethnology of the Czech Academy of Sciences), pp. 21-45

Forment, Bruno, and Christel Stalpaert (eds.). Theatrical Heritage: Challenges and Opportunities (Leuven: Leuven University Press)

Fouseki, Kalliopi. 2022. Heritage Dynamics: Understanding and Adapting to Change in Diverse Heritage Contexts(London: UCL Press)

Franko, Mark. 2017. ‘Introduction: The Power of Recall in a Post-Ephemeral Era’, in The Oxford Handbook of Dance and Reenactment, ed. by Mark Franko (New York: Oxford University Press): pp. 1-15

Grau, Andrée, and Georgiana Gore. 2014. ‘Dance, Cultural Heritage, and the Training of Future Heritage ‘Managers’: Anthropological Reflections’, in (Re)Searching the Field: Festschrift in Honour of Egil Bakka, ed. by Anne Margrete Fiskvik and Marit Stranden (Bergen: Fagbokforlaget), pp. 117-38

Hafstein, Valdimar Tr. 2009. ‘Intangible Heritage as a List: From Masterpieces to Representation’, in Intangible Heritage, ed. by Laurajane Smith and Natsuko Akagawa (London and New York: Routledge), pp. 107-25

Haldrup, Michael, and Jørgen Ole Bœrenholdt. 2015. ‘Heritage as Performance’, in The Palgrave Handbook of Contemporary Heritage Research, ed. by Emma Waterton and Steve Watson (London: Palgrave Macmillan) https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137293565_4

Kämpfe, Vicky. 2023. Dance Practices as Research, Approaches to the Safeguarding and Transmission of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Dance (Cham: Springer)

Kirshenblatt-Gimblet, Barbara. 2004. ‘Intangible Heritage as Metacultural Production’, Museum International 56.1-2: 52-65

Kwan, SanSan. 2017. ‘When is Contemporary Dance?’, Dance Research Journal, 49.3: 38-52

Margari, Zoi N. 2016. ‘Dance Advocacy in the Age of Austerity: UNESCO’s Intangible Cultural Heritage Convention and the Case of Dance’, Congress on Research in Dance Conference Proceedings: 240-50 https://doi.org/10.1017/cor.2016.33

Mcdermott, Philip, and Mairéad Nic Craith. 2025. ‘Introduction: Considering Creativity as a Response to Climate Change through Intangible Cultural Heritage’, Anthropological Journal of European Cultures 34.1: 3-8 https://doi.org/10.3167/ajec.2025.340102

Njaradi, Dunja. 2025. Између уметности и традиције: дебате о нематеријалном културном наслеђу у 21. веку. (Between Art and Tradition: Debates on Intangible Cultural Heritage in the Twenty-First Century) (Belgrade: Faculty of Music)

Petkovski, Filip. 2024. ‘Dance, Moving Identities, and the Political Economy of Intangible Cultural Heritage’, in The Routledge International Handbook of Heritage and Politics, ed. by Gönül Bozoğlu, Gary Campbell, Laurajane Smith, and Christopher Whitehead (London and New York: Routledge), pp. 543-51

Rakočević, Selena. 2020. ‘Political Complexities of Ethnochoreological Research: The Facets of Scholarly Work on Dance in the Countries of Former Yugoslavia”. Acta Ethnographica Hungarica 65.1: 13-26

Rašić, Miloš, Dunja Njaradi, and Krešimir Dabo (eds.). 2024. Choreography of Traditional Dance on Stage: Crises, Perspectives and Global Dialogues (Belgrade: Ensemble ‘Kolo’ and Institute of Ethnography SASA)

Smith, Laurajane, and Natsuko Akagawa (eds.). 2009. Intangible Heritage (London and New York: Routledge)

Taylor, Diana. 2003. The Archive and the Repertoire: Performing Cultural Memory in the Americas (Durham and London: Duke University Press)

Whatley, Sarah. 2022. ‘Embodied Cultural Property: Contemporary and Traditional Dance Practices’, International Journal of Cultural Property, 29.2: 171-81 https://doi.org/10.1017/S0940739122000108

Wulf, Christoph (ed.). 2024. Handbook on Intangible Cultural Practices as Global Strategies for the Future: Twenty Years of the UNESCO Convention on Safeguarding Intangible Cultural Heritage (Cham: Springer).