What is ICH?

　　2. Performing arts

　　The expressions central to the performing arts include especially vocal or instrumental music, dance, and theatre, but there are indeed many other traditional forms such as pantomime, sung verse, and certain forms of storytelling. Performing arts include a diversity of cultural expressions that together testify to human creativity and that are also found in different degree in many other domains of intangible heritage.

　　Music is of course the most often encountered of the performing arts, found in every society and in most cases an integral part of other performing art forms and other domains of ICH such as rituals, festive events, or oral traditions. We find it in the most diverse contexts: profane or sacred, classical or popular, closely connected to work, entertainment, even politics and economics that may call upon music to recount a people's past, sing the praises of a powerful person, or accompany or facilitate commercial transactions. The occasions on which it is performed are equally varied: marriages, funerals, rituals and initiations, festivities, all kinds of entertainment, or other social practices.

　　Dance may be described simply as ordered bodily expression, often with musical accompaniment, sung or instrumental. Apart from its physical aspect, the rhythmic movements, steps, or gestures of dance often serve to express a sentiment or mood or to illustrate a specific event or daily act, such as religious dances or those depicting hunting, warfare, or even sexual activities.

　　Traditional theatre performances often combine acting, singing, dance and music, dialogue, narration or recitation, but also include puppetry of all kinds as well as pantomime. These arts should perhaps not only be thought of as "performances" like those on a stage. In fact, many traditional music practices are not carried out for an external audience, such as songs accompanying agricultural work or music that is part of a ritual. In a more intimate setting, lullabies are sung to help a baby sleep.

　　In its definition of intangible heritage, the Convention includes the instruments, objects, artefacts and cultural spaces that are associated with intangible expressions and practices. In the performing arts, this includes for example musical instruments, masks, costumes and other body ornaments used in dance, and the scenery and props of theatre. Performing arts are often performed in specific places; when such spaces, built or natural, are closely linked to those expressions, we may speak of cultural spaces in the Convention's terms.