Aigul Kulbekova and the System of Cultural Continuity

We rarely pause to consider how this actually happens. When people speak of preserving cultural heritage, they most commonly think of museums, archives, festivals, or state programmes. In the case of intangible heritage, they think of performers, educators, and researchers. Each of these roles is genuinely important, yet a question remains that, for some reason, almost never becomes the subject of its own conversation — what precisely transforms one person's talent into a sustainable cultural system?

This question has always occurred to me as I have observed the professional journey of my teacher, Aigul Kulbekova. A great deal has been written about her. Performer, educator, professor and researcher, author of textbooks and holder of a doctorate. All of these definitions are accurate, yet I gradually found myself thinking that each one explains only a single stage of her biography, without answering the central question — what function did she fulfil within the Kazakh dance school?

Source: personal archive of Alfiya Kalmaganbetova

The moment one looks at her work through precisely this lens, the familiar biography begins to arrange itself into an entirely different picture — a fully realised mechanism for the preservation of culture. Where, precisely, does dance reside? Architecture can be conserved, a painting can be restored, and a book can be reprinted. Even an archaeological monument is capable of surviving centuries. With dance, however, everything is different, for it disappears at the very moment the person capable of performing it disappears.

Dance is one of the most fragile forms of cultural heritage. It cannot be preserved in the same way as an ancient city or a museum collection. One may record movement on video, describe it in a scholarly article, notate its musical metre or sequence of steps. Yet all of this will remain merely a document unless someone can be found who is able to fill that movement with meaning, character, physicality, and an inner culture of performance.

A paradox emerges — the principal repository of dance turns out to be human memory. Within the performer's memory are preserved the manner of movement, the sense of rhythm, the engagement of the torso, the character of gesture, and the understanding of image. This is precisely how I have always recalled a Kazakh dance lesson with Aigul Kulbekova — all that distinguishes a tradition from a mere sequence of movements — yet human memory is finite.

Every new generation confronts the same challenge: how to ensure that a national school does not depend solely upon the memory of its masters? And it is here that the true work of cultural preservation begins.

A defining figure

When we speak of a remarkable individual, we typically enumerate the stages of their professional life — from performer to international expert — yet if one follows that logic, it explains a career whilst saying almost nothing about the true role of Aigul Kulbekova. For throughout the decades, only the instruments of her work changed. The central task remained constant — to preserve the Kazakh dance school.

Source: personal archive of Alfiya Kalmaganbetova

On closer examination, it becomes apparent that each successive stage of her professional path did not replace the previous one but expanded the space within which Kazakh dance continued to exist. First, the knowledge lived within her as a performer; then in her students; later in scholarly research, textbooks, and the professional community.

Today, Kazakh dance passes through her stature into the international cultural arena, and this progression is considerably more significant than any list of titles or awards. For it is precisely this progression that demonstrates how personal experience is gradually transformed into a shared public inheritance.

The seed of this path began to germinate during Aigul Kulbekova's formation as a soloist with the state ensemble Altynai. Before any research exists, there is always a person who inhabits a tradition through their own body. The performance stage of her professional life strikes me not merely as the beginning of a biography, but as the foundation of everything that followed.

There is a fundamental difference between a researcher who studies dance through archives and a person who first spent many years existing within that culture as a performer. The former analyses, whilst the latter first feels — and this distinction is difficult to measure, yet it is often what determines the depth of one's understanding of the subject. Work on stage affords the opportunity to perceive what cannot be fully conveyed in a scholarly text — what makes dance distinctly Kazakh, rather than simply beautiful.

Such things cannot be articulated in words. They become part of professional experience. This is why, in the scholarly works of Aigul Kulbekova, dance is never treated as a collection of isolated movements. I believe the stage became the point of departure for her research. Yet even the most gifted performer encounters an inevitable limitation.

Lost in transmission

Personal experience cannot be transmitted in its entirety — each student receives it in their own way, each new generation inevitably preserves something, reinterprets something, and loses something. It is then that the necessity arises to translate living experience into the language of pedagogy.

Source: personal archive of Alfiya Kalmaganbetova

A teacher no longer simply demonstrates a movement; they must answer a far more complex question: how to teach another person to understand a national school as deeply as one understands it oneself. The distinction may seem slight, yet it determines the future of any cultural tradition. One may teach a person to perform a particular piece, or one may impart to them a way of seeing, feeling, and understanding dance.

In the latter case, what is reproduced is no longer a single work but the school itself. This is why the pedagogical activity of Aigul Kulbekova is perceived as a natural continuation of her experience as a performer. Here, it is not only movement that is preserved. The logic of artistic thinking is preserved — and it is precisely at this moment that the transition begins from the memory of a single master to the memory of an entire professional community.

Even the most accomplished pedagogical school remains vulnerable so long as knowledge exists solely within the relationship between teacher and pupil. A teacher may depart, and pupils may choose their own paths. Methodology may gradually shift. A natural question arises: how does one preserve not individual movements, but the very logic of a national school? 

The answer lies in scholarship. Academic research makes it possible to translate the language of the stage into the language of analysis. It reveals patterns that previously existed only in practice. At this moment, the experience of performance ceases to belong to a single individual and becomes a subject of professional inquiry.

Source: personal archive of Alfiya Kalmaganbetova

It is here that the professional trajectory of Aigul Kulbekova acquires particular significance. She did not abandon practice in favour of scholarship; rather, she made scholarship a continuation of practice. Her experience as a performer allowed her to discern the underlying patterns of Kazakh dance, her work as a pedagogue raised the question of how such knowledge might be transmitted, and her academic endeavours provided the means to articulate precisely why these principles lend the national school its enduring strength.

The result was not merely a series of studies, but an entire language in which Kazakh dance could be discussed as an independent academic discipline. Where knowledge had once been passed on solely through personal communion with a master, it now became accessible to hundreds of students and educators, irrespective of time or place.

This is precisely why the creation of textbooks cannot be regarded as routine pedagogical work. In essence, it constitutes the designing of a national school's future. Each methodology responds not only to the question of how to teach, but also to the question of what, precisely, must endure across the decades.

The work of Aigul Kulbekova has developed in parallel within the system of higher education, and its significance extends far beyond her own students — it is part of a considerably broader process. The department becomes a place where not merely individual performers are shaped, but new teachers, researchers, and choreographers. At this juncture, the educational environment itself becomes the custodian of cultural memory.

And it is then that the pattern I observed in analysing her sustained professional journey becomes especially clear. Each successive stage did not supplant the one before it. It simply expanded the scale on which the culture of Kazakh dance was being preserved.

The evolution of the space in which the Kazakh dance school exists

When one surveys this journey in its entirety, what emerges is a gradual expansion of the space in which a single cultural tradition continues to live. I cannot fail to mention the Shara Zhienkulova Competition for professional performers of Kazakh dance, which Aigul Kulbekova revived in the early 2000s.

We tend to regard competitions, festivals and conferences as isolated events, yet for culture they serve a considerably deeper function, becoming platforms where different generations converge. At competitions, schools of performance are compared and methodologies debated. They become the places where professional benchmarks and standards are formed.

So long as a professional community exists, the national school continues to evolve — it ceases to be the preserve of a single department or a single ensemble. It becomes the preserve of the profession itself.

Expanding Influence

Every culture is born within its own people, yet it becomes truly enduring only when it enters into a global cultural dialogue. The work of Aigul Kulbekova has long extended beyond the borders of Kazakhstan. Her involvement in international projects and participation in research into the dance heritage of the Turkic world opens a new dimension of cultural preservation.

Source: personal archive of Alfiya Kalmaganbetova

This is no longer simply the transmission of knowledge within a single national school, but the incorporation of Kazakh dance into a broader cultural memory. Such a transition carries particular significance — the more cultures know of one another, the greater the likelihood that each will preserve its own identity. International dialogue does not erase distinctions; it renders them a source of value.

In working on this article, I found myself returning ever more frequently to the thought that we are accustomed to measuring a person's contribution by the number of students taught, scholarly publications produced, performances staged, or state honours received. Yet there is another way of perceiving an individual's significance — through the functions that continue to operate even when that person is no longer present.

Aigul Kulbekova is not merely a teacher or a researcher. Each new phase of her work expands the space in which the Kazakh dance school exists. From the memory of a single performer to the memory of a generation. From a generation to an educational system. From a system to a professional community. From a national school to an international cultural dialogue.

I believe this is why her contribution lies not only in the preservation of Kazakh dance, but in the creation of conditions under which this tradition has been afforded the possibility of living simultaneously in multiple forms: on stage, in the lecture hall, in scholarly research, in textbooks, in institutions, and within the international cultural arena.

Perhaps this is precisely how genuine cultural continuity is born — not when a single individual preserves a tradition, but when, through that individual's work, the tradition ceases to depend on any one person alone and becomes part of a living system capable of continuing its own history.

This function has been fulfilled in various countries by those through whose efforts traditions did not disappear but became part of educational and cultural institutions. Regardless of the country, the mechanism proves to be remarkably similar: personal mastery is transformed into a system for the transmission of knowledge. The professional journey of Aigul Kulbekova allows us to perceive this universal mechanism for the preservation of intangible cultural heritage. It is in precisely this way that human memory becomes cultural memory.