Dance, ontology, and national identity in the metamodern cultural paradigm

Abstract

The contemporary cultural landscape reveals a growing crisis in postmodern interpretations of national culture, which tend to emphasize fragmentation, relativism, and the deconstruction of stable meanings. While such approaches have enriched critical cultural theory, they frequently neglect the corporeal, experiential, and affective dimensions through which national identity is sustained. Within this context, dance emerges not merely as an aesthetic or performative practice but as an ontological mode of cultural existence through which collective meanings are generated, transmitted, and renewed. Drawing on philosophical-ontological, cultural-anthropological, and hermeneutic perspectives, this article examines dance as a corporeal system of cultural memory and historical continuity that operates beyond purely textual or representational models. Using two Central Asian traditions—Uzbek Lazgi and Kazakh Kara Jorga—as illustrative cases, the analysis demonstrates that the metamodern cultural paradigm enables a reconfiguration of traditional dance by oscillating between preservation and innovation, sincerity and reflexivity, continuity and transformation. Rather than reducing traditional dance to folkloric representation, metamodernism reactivates it as a living practice that produces national meaning through bodily presence and performative repetition. By conceptualizing dance as a dynamic process of identity formation rather than a symbolic reflection of culture, the article contributes to dance ontology and cultural identity studies. Crucially, this reconceptualization carries significant implications for cultural sustainability, shifting heritage preservation from static documentation toward the support of living, corporeal practice.