Dancing Into the Digital Age: Experimenting the Digitization of the Pauliteiros Folk Dances

Digitizing intangible cultural heritage is a crucial step in preserving and protecting traditions, customs, and knowledge that have been passed down from generation to generation. By creating a comprehensive record of intangible cultural practices, digitization allows for greater access, research, and education, promoting cultural diversity and understanding. This paper discusses approaches to the digitization of intangible cultural heritage, which allow the dissemination and preservation of knowledge applicable to folk dances, particularly in the context of ethnographic museums. Possible applications with this motion data will also be explored, such as Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality or video games. This paper finally discusses and proposes a framework for digitization of folk dances based on the practical case of the “Dança dos Paulitos” or “Dança dos Pauliteiros” [1], a Portuguese festive dance ritual tradition from Miranda do Douro in northeastern Portugal.