<p>This article intends to elucidate the transformation of the patrimonial institution governing a traditional folk dance, called the Nishiure Dengaku, practiced in Misakubo, Shizuoka Prefecture, in central Japan. Dengaku Iiterally means "rice-paddy music," denoting the traditional folk dance that had developed in Japanese peasant culture before modernization. Generally, the succession of folk dance/music can be understood easily in terms of the process of distributing body resources. From that perspective, we pay special attention to the interactive organization in the rehearsal scene that enables the older dancers to pass on their physical techniques to younger dancers. Nisiure Dengaku, selected by the Japanese government as an intangible folk-cultural asset in 1976, is assumed to have continued for more than 200 years. Its primary practice consists of a festival called Kannon-sama, which is annually held on January 18 of the lunar calendar. During this all-night festival, 33 dance numbers of the ji-noh (ground dance), and 11-12 of the hane-noh (leaping dance) are performed: they are assumed to be devoted to the gods, who are syncretic of Buddhist and Shinto deities. The former numbers used to be assigned to 24 particular families of the village, who constituted an exclusive group called the noh-shu (dance-people). In each family, only the eldest son inherited from his father one of the numbers, or a set of numbers, of ji-noh. Since the late 1960s, however, that patrimonial institution was forced to be modified under the menace of depopulation: the ji-noh repertoires were redistributed among the remaining 14 families until the mid-1990s. Especially, a number of ji-noh parts that had once been assigned to families that died out became played instead by several skillful members of other families. It is assumed that the physical techniques were developed by the new dancers trough the voluntary contest of hane-noh, whose assignment is not prescribed by the patrimony. Our research, carried out from 2000 to 2005, revealed that all the performers of hane-noh were father-son pairs who were simultaneously participating in the festival. It is evident that in these families there is a rapid and successful succession of physical techniques from the older to the younger generation. A microanalysis of video records of the rehearsal scene illuminates a number of peculiar characteristics of interactive organization, in which instruction and learning consistently coordinate with each other. One of the noh-shu, endowed with an excellent talent for dancing, stated that the essence of mastering was to "watch and learn." However, there is a difficult dilemma to overcome between "watching" and "learning." If the novice wants to learn how to dance, he has to move his own body himself, imitating the instructor's body movement. However, the acting of most dancing includes a distinctive rotary motion of the whole body from 90 to 270 degrees, which often makes it impossible for the novice to keep watching his "model." In that respect, the bodily arrangement among the participants has critical importance: which of the side-by-side,backward, or face-to-face positions of the novice toward the instructor is most effective for his watching and learning? Also deserving of special attention is how the physical resources embedded in the rehearsal setting are exploited. The most important resource for the rehearsal is the drumming sounds, with parallel simulations of two or more different numbers sharing the same beat. The four sides of the room-sliding shutter, closet, entrance to the cooking room, and the front area in which the drum is set-represent the four directions of the two different stages: the indoor stage in the Chinju-sama eve, and the open air stage in the Kannon-sama festival. The most difficult task for novices is to successively turn their</p><p>(View PDF for the rest of the abstract.)</p>