A QUALITATIVE STUDY ON FOLK DANCE TRAINERS' EVALUATION OF FOLK DANCE AT THE PERSPECTIVE OF TOURISM

Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH) is the unique cultural practices shaped by the lives of societies. These cultural practices can be perpetuated by transferring from generation to generation. Culture is seen as an important tourist product in the tourism sector. The reason is that different cultures and different practices in these cultures cause tourists to interest. It is seen that folk dances, which are considered as ICH, are also used for tourist purposes with their tourist attractions. The main purpose of this study is to dwell upon the current use of folk dances for tourism purposes and to reveal the folk dances trainers’ opinions on the importance of folk dances in terms of tourism. For this purpose, face-to-face interviews were held with 20 folk dance trainers. Descriptive analysis was performed by interpreting the obtained data. It has been determined that the trainers look positively towards the use of folk dances for tourism due to their contribution to the promotion of the country. However, they expressed that they did not deem it appropriate to perform the folk dances differently from the essence in order to attract the interest of the tourists