ONTOLOGY FOR DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION OF BULGARIAN DANCE FOLKLORE

This paper presents an ontology describing Bulgarian dance folklore as part of Bulgaria's cultural and historical heritage. The study focuses on a specific dance piece – "Horo in Sofia", choreographed by Kiril Djenev. The ontology is developed in accordance with the CCO (Cataloging Cultural Objects) standard, which provides guidelines for data content standards. The created ontological structure serves as a knowledge base intended for use by intelligent agents. The application of standards significantly facilitates data dissemination, with CCO providing clear and precise definitions of the attributes an object should possess. The ontologies, developed in Protégé, are designed to meet the requirements of this standard. Five key characteristics were used to represent the dance: ethnographic area, artistic-social function, participant composition, number of participants, and musical accompaniment. Semantic modeling utilizes RDF, and the additional application of RDFS and OWL provides a powerful toolkit for modeling and creating ontologies. This work lays the foundation for the digital transformation of Bulgarian dance heritage and provides a valuable resource for researchers, teachers, and students. The development is part of a broader project focused on the digitization of cultural and historical heritage.