Performing Arts

**Performing arts** refers to forms of art in which artists use their voices, bodies or inanimate objects to convey artistic expression. It is different from visual arts, which is when artists use paint, canvas or various materials to create physical or static art objects. Performing arts include a range of disciplines which are performed in front of a live audience.

Theatre, music, dance and object manipulation, and other kinds of performances are present in all human cultures. The history of music and dance date to pre-historic times whereas circus skills date to at least Ancient Egypt. Many performing arts are performed professionally. Performance can be in purpose built buildings, such as theatres and opera houses, on open air stages at festivals, on stages in tents such as circuses and on the street.

Live performances before an audience are a form of entertainment. The development of audio and video recording has allowed for private consumption of the performing arts.

The performing arts often aims to express one's emotions and feelings.

## Performers:

Artists who participate in performing arts in front of an audience are called performers. Examples of these include actors, comedians, dancers, magicians, circus artists, musicians, and singers. Performing arts are also supported by workers in related fields, such as songwriting, choreography and stagecraft.

A performer who excels in acting, singing, and dancing is commonly referred to as a ***triple threat***.[2] Well-known examples of historical triple threat artists include Gene Kelly, Fred Astaire, and Judy Garland.[2]

Performers often adapt their appearance, such as with costumes and stage makeup, stage lighting, and sound.

## Types:

Performing arts may include dance, music, opera, theatre and musical theatre, magic, illusion, mime, spoken word, puppetry, circus arts, performance art.

There is also a specialized form of fine art, in which the artists *perform* their work live to an audience. This is called performance art. Most performance art also involves some form of plastic art, perhaps in the creation of props. Dance was often referred to as a plastic art during the Modern dance era.[3]

### Theatre:

Theatre is the branch of performing arts; concerned with acting out stories in front of an audience, using a combination of speech, gesture, music, dance, sound and spectacle. Any one or more of these elements is performing arts. In addition to the standard narrative dialogue style of plays. Theater takes such forms as plays, musicals, opera, ballet, illusion, mime, classical Indian dance, kabuki, mummers' plays, improvisational theatre, comedy, pantomime, and non-conventional or contemporary forms like postmodern theatre, postdramatic theatre, or performance art.

### Dance[edit source]

Main article: Dance

A ballerina en pointe.

In the context of performing arts, dance generally refers to human movement, typically rhythmic and to music, used as a form of audience entertainment in a performance setting. Definitions of what constitutes dance are dependent on social, cultural, aesthetic artistic and moral constraints and range from functional movement (such as folk dance) to codified, virtuoso techniques such as ballet.[4]

There is one another modern form of dance that emerged in 19th- 20th century with the name of Free-Dance style. This form of dance was structured to create a harmonious personality which included features such as physical and spiritual freedom. Isadora Duncan was the first female dancer who argued about "woman of future" and developed novel vector of choreography using Nietzsche’s idea of "supreme mind in free mind".[5]

Dance is a powerful impulse, but the art of dance is that impulse channeled by skillful performers into something that becomes intensely expressive and that may delight spectators who feel no wish to dance themselves. These two concepts of the art of dance—dance as a powerful impulse and dance as a skillfully choreographed art practiced largely by a professional few—are the two most important connecting ideas running through any consideration of the subject. In dance, the connection between the two concepts is stronger than in some other arts, and neither can exist without the other.[4]

Choreography is the art of making dances, and the person who practices this art is called a choreographer.

### Music[edit source]

Main article: Music

Music is an art form which combines pitch, rhythm, and dynamic to create sound. It can be performed using a variety of instruments and styles and is divided into genres such as folk, jazz, hip hop, pop, and rock, etc. As an art form, music can occur in live or recorded formats, and can be planned or improvised.

Sophocles, as depicted in the Nordisk familjebok.

As music is a protean art, it easily coordinates with words for songs as physical movements do in dance. Moreover, it has a capability of shaping human behaviors as it impacts our emotions.[6]

## History[edit source]

### History of Western performing arts[edit source]

Main article: Western art history

See also: Antitheatricality

Starting in the 6th century BC, the Classical period of performing art began in Greece, ushered in by the tragic poets such as Sophocles. These poets wrote plays which, in some cases, incorporated dance (see Euripides). The Hellenistic period began the widespread use of comedy.

However, by the 6th century AD, Western performing arts had been largely ended, as the Dark Ages began. Between the 9th century and 14th century, performing art in the West was limited to religious historical enactments and morality plays, organized by the Church in celebration of holy days and other important events.

#### Renaissance[edit source]

Main article: Renaissance

In the 15th century performing arts, along with the arts in general, saw a revival as the Renaissance began in Italy and spread throughout Europe plays, some of which incorporated dance, which were performed and Domenico da Piacenza credited with the first use of the term *ballo* (in *De Arte Saltandi et Choreas Ducendi*) instead of *danza* (dance) for his *baletti* or *balli*. The term eventually became *Ballet*. The first Ballet *per se* is thought to be Balthasar de Beaujoyeulx's Ballet Comique de la Reine (1581).

*Commedia dell'arte troupe on a wagon*, by Jan Miel, 1640

By the mid-16th century Commedia Dell'arte became popular in Europe, introducing the use of improvisation. This period also introduced the Elizabethan masque, featuring music, dance and elaborate costumes as well as professional theatrical companies in England. William Shakespeare's plays in the late 16th century developed from this new class of professional performance.

In 1597, the first opera, Dafne was performed and throughout the 17th century, opera would rapidly become the entertainment of choice for the aristocracy in most of Europe, and eventually for large numbers of people living in cities and towns throughout Europe.

#### Modern Era[edit source]

The introduction of the proscenium arch in Italy during the 17th century established the traditional theatre form that persists to this day. Meanwhile, in England, the Puritans forbade acting, bringing a halt to performing arts that lasted until 1660. After that, women began to appear in both French and English plays. The French introduced a formal dance instruction in the late 17th century.

It is also during this time that the first plays were performed in the American Colonies.

During the 18th century, the introduction of the popular opera buffa brought opera to the masses as an accessible form of performance. Mozart's *The Marriage of Figaro* and *Don Giovanni* are landmarks of the late 18th century opera.

At the turn of the 19th century, Beethoven and the Romantic movement ushered in a new era that led first to the spectacles of grand opera and then to the musical dramas of Giuseppe Verdi and the Gesamtkunstwerk (total work of art) of the operas of Richard Wagner leading directly to the music of the 20th century.

The 19th century was a period of growth for the performing arts for all social classes, technical advances such as the introduction of gaslight to theatres, burlesque, minstrel dancing, and variety theatre. In ballet, women make great progress in the previously male-dominated art.

Isadora Duncan, one of the developers of free dance.

Modern dance began in the late 19th century and early 20th century in response to the restrictions of traditional ballet.

Konstantin Stanislavski's "System" revolutionized acting in the early 20th century, and continues to have a major influence on actors of stage and screen to the current day. Both impressionism and modern realism were introduced to the stage during this period.

The arrival of Sergei Diaghilev's Ballets Russes (1909–1929) revolutionized ballet and the performing arts generally throughout the Western world, most importantly through Diaghilev's emphasis on collaboration, which brought choreographers, dancers, set designers/artists, composers and musicians together to revitalize and revolutionize ballet. It is extremely complex.

With the invention of the motion picture in the late 19th century by Thomas Edison and the growth of the motion picture industry in Hollywood in the early 20th century, film became a dominant performance medium throughout the 20th and 21st centuries.

Rhythm and blues, a cultural phenomenon of black America, became to prominence in the early 20th century; influencing a range of later popular music styles internationally.

In the 1930s Jean Rosenthal introduced what would become modern stage lighting, changing the nature of the stage as the Broadway musical became a phenomenon in the United States.