By Eugenio Barba and Nicola Savarese review by Howard Rheingold A true how-to book on practical magic. Education, friendship, courtship, parenting, politics, art, commerce, warfare all depend upon a strong element of performance. This book is a treasurehouse of astonishing and useful lore about how performers perform, everywhere in the world, illustrated by a profusion of equally astonishing and useful photographs and drawings. Mudras, minuets, masks, ritual, biomechanics, draumaturgy, rhythm, staging, improv, semiotics, footwork, make-up, choreography, mythology and other phenomena that reflect different aspects of the full spectrum of human performance are examined with attention to spiritual, communicative, social, and aesthetic meanings of each variety of performative behavior. Society is a performance.
Culture is a performance.
We are performers, and we might as well get good at it. It is a sign that the dancer is reacting to something precise. At times, a performer's training exercises appear to be extraordinarily well-executed, but the actions have no power because the way of using the eyes is not precisely directed. In this sense, the eyes are like the performer's second spinal column. All the Oriental traditions codify eye movements and the directions the eyes must follow.