Analyzing Taiwanese Indigenous Folk Dances via Labanotation and Comparing Results from Interdisciplinary Studies

Taiwanese indigenous people have abundant cultural identities. Unfortunately, this precious intangible cultural heritage is fading away due to migration and urbanization. This study aims to (1) explore folk dances of these people in order to preserve the dances in digital form, (2) describe those dances by symbolic features extracted for classification, (3) compare results from interdisciplinary studies to help understand social structures among Taiwanese indigenous people. This study showed the basis-step dance classification and the correlation between other disciplines; the correlation of dance relates to language closer than to genetics. The classification described in this paper could serve as the basis for a study of observation of ethnic cultural correlations.

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