Welcome to Performing Arts

Speech & Arts Class 2018

Theatre, music, dance, and other kinds of
performances are present in all human cultures.
The history of music and dance date to pre-
historic times. More refined versions, such as
ballet, opera, and Kabuki, are performed
professionally.
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.
 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. 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, recitation and
public speaking.
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.
 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. Theatre takes such forms as plays,
musicals, opera, ballet, illusion, mime, classical Indian
dance, kabuki, mummers' plays, improvisational theatre,
stand-up comedy, pantomime, and non-conventional or
contemporary forms like postmodern theatre,
1. The Greek word
“behold.”
postdramatic theatre, or performance art
for theater (theatron) comes from the verb theasthai, meaning

2. You are likely to behold a play or a film inside a theater. If you've dedicated your
3. life to theater, you are probably an actor, director or playwright.
 Choreography is the art of making dances, and the
Dance person who practices this art is called a
choreographer.
Dance is a powerful impulse, but the art In the context of performing arts, dance generally refers
of dance is that impulse channeled by to human movement, typically rhythmic and to music,
skillful performers into something that used as a form of audience entertainment in a
becomes intensely expressive and that performance setting. Definitions of what constitutes
may delight spectators who feel no wish dance are dependent on social, cultural, aesthetic
to dance themselves. These two concepts artistic and moral constraints and range from functional
of the art of dance—dance as a powerful movement (such as folk dance) to codified, virtuoso
impulse and dance as a skillfully techniques such as ballet.[4]
choreographed art practiced largely by a There is one another modern form of dance that
professional few—are the two most emerged in 19th- 20th century with the name of Free-
important connecting ideas running Dance style. This form of dance was structured to create
through any consideration of the subject. a harmonious personality which included features such
In dance, the connection between the as physical and spiritual freedom. Isadora Duncan was
two concepts is stronger than in some the first female dancer who argued about “woman of
other arts, and neither can exist without future” and developed novel vector of choreography
the other. using Nietzsche’s idea of “supreme mind in free mind”.
Music
As music is a protean art, it easily co-
Music is an art form which
combines pitch, rhythm, and ordinates with words for songs as physical
dynamic in order to create
movements do in dance. Moreover, it has a
sound. It can be performed
using a variety of instruments capability of shaping human behaviors as it
and styles and is divided into
impacts our emotions.
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.
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.
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. The
Hellenistic period began the widespread use
of comedy
 Renaissance
By the mid-16th century Commedia Dell'arte
became popular in Europe, introducing the use of
improvisation. This period also introduced the
In the 15th century performing arts, along with the arts in general, saw
Elizabethan masque, featuring music, dance and
a revival as the Renaissance began in Italy and spread throughout
elaborate costumes as well as professional theatrical
companies in England. William Shakespeare's plays Europe plays, some of which incorporated dance, which were
in the late 16th century developed from this new performed and Domenico da Piacenza credited with the first use of
class of professional performance. the term ballo (in De Arte Saltandi et Choreas Ducendi) instead of
danza (dance) for his baletti or balli. The term eventually became

In 1597, the first opera, Dafne was Ballet. The first Ballet per se is thought to be Balthasar de
performed and throughout the 17th century, Beaujoyeulx's Ballet Comique de la Reine
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.
It is also during this time that the first
Modern Era
plays were performed in the
American Colonies.
During the 18th century, the
introduction of the popular opera The introduction of the proscenium arch in Italy during the 17th

buffa brought opera to the masses as century established the traditional theatre form that persists to this

an accessible form of performance. day. Meanwhile, in England, the Puritans forbade acting, bringing a

Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro and halt to performing arts that lasted until 1660. After that, women

Don Giovanni are landmarks of the began to appear in both French and English plays. The French

late 18th century opera. introduced a formal dance instruction in the late 17th century.

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 Modern dance began in the
theatres, burlesque, late 19th century and early 20th
minstrel dancing, and century in response to the
variety theatre. In ballet, restrictions of traditional ballet.
women make great
progress in the previously
male-dominated art.
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 Rhythm and blues, a cultural
Edison and the growth of phenomenon of black
the motion picture America, became to
prominence in the early 20th
industry in Hollywood in
century; influencing a range
the early 20th century, film of later popular music styles
became a dominant internationally.
performance medium
throughout the 20th and
21st centuries.
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.
 Post-War performance
Post-World War II performing arts
Modern street theatre performance in La
Chaux-de-Fonds were highlighted by the resurgence

Postmodernism in of both ballet and opera in the

Western world.
performing arts
dominated the
1960s to large
extent.