The Asia Dance Culture Institute, under the Department of Ethnic Dance at Gyeongsang National University, staged a Korean traditional dance performance on November 11, 2019, which consisted of taepyeongmu (dance of great peace; Korean National Intangible Cultural Heritage No. 92), salpurichum (exorcism dance; Korean National Intangible Cultural Heritage No. 46), Dongnae hallyangchum (playboy dance of Dongnae; Busan Intangible Cultural Heritage No. 14) and Jindo bukchum (drum dance of Jindo; Jeollanam-do Intangible Cultural Heritage No. 18). The conceptual theme of the performance was to envisage the prestige of Korean traditional dance and facilitate its encounter with artificial intelligence (AI) robots in the coming era of the 4th Industrial Revolution.\nIt was regarded in dance circles as the first experimental performance of a traditional dance involving an AI robot in Korea. nSince its launch in 2007, the Asia Dance Culture Institute has identified, inherited and developed Asian dance, and furthermore, disseminated it widely in Korea and abroad with the aim to promote the greatness of Asian choreographed arts. It also endeavors to develop cultural contents for Asian dance through academic conferences and education projects. This year, we ventured to perform “Dialogue Between Dance and Robots” as a regular performance of the Asian Traditional Dance Company. Our time-honored dance that has been inherited from the distant past through the lasting accumulation of time is said to be a product into which the past and the present have been condensed and converged. The moment such traditional dance encounters engineering science, we can cautiously begin to anticipate the upcoming future. In the not-so-distant future, perhaps we will feel that AI and robots are our close companions in life, as opposed to simple tools, as we enter into the era of the fourth industrial revolution. It would not be an exaggeration to speculate that this work of collaboration between humans and robots on stage represents a new world that awaits us. The Asia Dance Culture Institute will continue its efforts to create new content that will be born from the convergence of intangible cultural heritage and artificial intelligence.

Ariyapala & Sons’ passing through their fifth generation of carving traditional masks and dancing is a non-profit organization which works with the mask making community in Ambalagoda. Ambalangoda is a very popular cultural centre in the southern coastal region of Srilanka and is well known for traditional mask carving and mask dancing. It was named after ‘Ariyapala Wijesuriya Gurunnanse’, one of the greatest master craftsmen in Sri Lanka. The organisational building includes a well developed museum, a workshop and a well decorated product display shop with various types of traditional masks. The museum is designed to introduce into the richness of the mask tradition of Ambalangoda and to strengthen cultural heritage. This museum also has a small library containing all available anthropological literature on mask performances to serve as a centre for traditional arts & crafts and for research as well.

AIACA, a nationwide network of handicraft and handloom clusters, directly addresses the need to empower traditional artisan clusters across India through professionalization of their craft based skills for sustainable enterprise development. AIACA specializes in sustainable craft based livelihood initiatives through skill development, design innovation and product diversification, entrepreneurship development, direct market access, access to social entitlements and schemes and policy advocacy. AIACA has a unique national certification proramme, Craftmark (www.craftmark.org), that certifies and improves the economic competitiveness of genuine handmade craft processes and products of India and brings under its fold, artisans, SHGs, cooperatives, associations, social enterprises, and individual practitioners to gain from its business development and promotional services thus creating dignity and pride in the practice of traditional crafts in the long run. AIACA has over 75 Craftmark members (outreach of over 20,000 artisans across 22 states of India) and has documented over 80 traditional craft processes practiced in the country.