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https://doi.org/10.62836/jissh.v3i4.0035
Yang, L., & Yi, L. (2026). Reframing Legong Keraton in Contemporary Scholarship: History, Embodiment, and Heritage Transformation. Journal of Integrated Social Sciences and Humanities, 3(4), 0035. https://doi.org/10.62836/jissh.v3i4.0035
Volume 3, Issue 4, 2026

Reframing Legong Keraton in Contemporary Scholarship: History, Embodiment, and Heritage Transformation

This article examines how selected English-language scholarship explains continuity and change in Legong Keraton. It brings historical debates about origins into dialogue with research on embodied learning, tourism, and cultural heritage. The central argument is that continuity requires analysis at three connected levels: the retention of artistic forms, the reproduction of performance competence, and the authority to define valued practice. The disagreement over Legong’s chronology shows that a shared name or courtly association does not establish an unchanged choreographic object. Studies of bodily knowledge and performance learning explain why recognizable forms depend on situated processes of acquisition and evaluation. Research on tourism and preservation, in turn, demonstrates that international visibility and institutional support must be assessed in relation to the practices they sustain. On this basis, the article interprets heritage transformation as a selective reorganization of relationships among repertoire, learning, and recognition. Its contribution is an analytical framework for comparing these relationships without assuming either inevitable cultural loss or assured resilience. The discussion is a selective narrative review; its propositions guide further historical and ethnographic inquiry rather than establish the present condition of every Legong tradition.

Legong Keraton Balinese dance embodied learning cultural heritage tourism artistic transmission

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Supporting Agencies

  1. Funding: This research received no external funding.