Choreographing Cultural Memory: Embodied Practices for Reimagining Heritage in Contemporary Performance

Cultural memory has become a central concern in contemporary performance studies, particularly in relation to how embodied practices contribute to the transmission and reimagining of heritage. While heritage scholarship has traditionally emphasized archival preservation, dance offers a distinct epistemological approach that foregrounds lived, sensorial, and affective modes of knowing. This conceptual paper examines how choreographic practices function as forms of embodied cultural memory, arguing that performance enables memory to be activated, negotiated, and transformed through bodily engagement. Drawing on interdisciplinary literature in cultural memory studies, embodied cognition, somatic epistemologies, and Practice-as-Research (PaR), the article proposes an integrative framework that conceptualizes the body as a living archive, choreography as embodied cultural translation, and participatory performance as collective memory work. Rather than presenting empirical case studies, the paper advances a theoretical synthesis that clarifies the methodological and epistemological implications of embodied memory practices for contemporary performance. It argues that choreographic engagement with cultural memory offers socially meaningful pathways for rethinking heritage as dynamic, relational, and continuously reimagined.