Southeast Asia boasts an astounding assemblage of traditional performing arts, varied in form, style or genre, time or period, and geographical source. Through the performing arts people assert ethnic identity, a dignifying and unifying force in a community. A performing art tradition conjures continuity; it is history. To lose such tradition is therefore to lose history. Dance, like other performing art traditions, is the expression of a people’s soul captured in motion. To safeguard such forms, they must be studied and documented, including the artistic material resources, oral traditions, beliefs, and practices embodied in them. These traditions are not museum pieces, but art forms that must be nurtured as artifacts that grow or transform as societies change.