Folk and stage dance as a means of preserving and promoting national cultural heritage in dance education

Abstract

The aim of this study is to determine the role of folk stage dance as an effective means of preserving and promoting the national cultural heritage within the system of contemporary higher choreography education in Ukraine, as well as to identify methods and techniques for working with this genre, particularly through the use of digital technologies that facilitate the broadcasting and documentation of dance folklore. Methods. The analysis was conducted through a comparative study of ten educational and professional programs in the specialty 024 "Choreography" implemented at higher education institutions in various regions of Ukraine. Methods used included competency-based analysis of the academic workload, systematization of international experience, as well as a review of research on the implementation of augmented and virtual reality, motion capture systems, and metaverse platforms in choreography education. Results. Folk and stage dance is included in all the programs analyzed as a mandatory component of professional training, however, the number of credits for this module varies significantly: from 16 credits at the Kyiv Municipal Academy of Variety and Circus Arts and the Yuriy Kondratyuk Poltava Polytechnic National University to 33 credits at the Ivan Franko National University of Lviv. Most programs introduce folk stage dance or Ukrainian folk dance starting in the first semester, which helps lay the cultural and identity foundation for the specialist's training. In contrast, the Kyiv Municipal Academy of Variety and Circus Arts places the folk-stage dance discipline in the final year, assigning it a synthesizing rather than a formative function, which is pedagogically less effective given the limited duration of the student's engagement with the cultural material. In terms of competency outcomes, folk stage dance encompasses three dimensions: cognitive (regional specificity, terminology, principles of staging folklore), performance-technical (vocabulary of different peoples, methods of working with a group), and value-identity (understanding choreography as a means of affirming national identity). At the same time, the value dimension remains the least explored in the programs. An analysis of international experience shows that augmented and virtual reality technologies, motion capture systems, and metaverse environments demonstrate a statistically significant improvement in performance metrics regarding both the reproduction of movement vocabulary and the assimilation of the cultural context of folk dance. At the same time, none of the analyzed Ukrainian educational and professional programs show a clear connection between the folk-stage component and the digital documentation of intangible cultural heritage. Conclusions. The study confirmed that folk stage dance has real potential as a means of preserving and promoting national cultural heritage within the system of higher choreographic education. An analysis of ten programs demonstrated its consistent presence in curricula and its coverage of three competency dimensions – knowledge, technical, and values. International experience confirms the effectiveness of digital technologies for preserving and disseminating dance folklore; however, Ukrainian programs have not yet realized this potential.