How is performance art different from theater

Many diverse forms of music may be homogenized with the goal of delivering a consistent product. In these situations, there is little place for certain musical practices that are vital to the process of performance and tradition in certain communities. Music, dance and theatre are often key features of cultural promotion intended to attract tourists and regularly feature in the itineraries of tour operators.

Although this may bring more visitors and increased revenue to a country or community and offer a window onto its culture, it may also result in the emergence of new ways of presenting the performing arts, which have been altered for the tourist market. Often, traditional art forms are turned into commodities in the name of entertainment, with the loss of important forms of community expression.

In other cases, wider social or environmental factors may have a serious impact on performing art traditions. Deforestation, for example, can deprive a community of wood to make traditional instruments used to perform music.

Many music traditions have been adapted to fit western forms of notation so they may be recorded, or for the purpose of education, but this process can be destructive.

Many forms of music use scales with tones and intervals that do not correspond to standard western forms and tonal subtleties may be lost in the process of transcription. As well as music beinghomogenised, changes to traditional instruments to make them more familiar or easier to play for students, such as the addition of frets to stringed instruments, fundamentally alter the instruments themselves. Safeguarding measures for traditional performing arts should focus mainly on transmission of knowledge and techniques, of playing and making instruments and strengthening the bond between master and apprentice.

The subtleties of a song, the movements of a dance and theatrical interpretations should all be reinforced. Performances may also be researched, recorded, documented, inventoried and archived. Experimental theatre can be surreal and difficult to understand, but it does still tend to have a narrative unto an end and, even if the actors are playing themselves and improvising wildly, they are still character-based constructs.

Performance art is more insular and, rather than emulating or experiencing life as it is, seeks to create new boundary-pushing experiences. Vito Acconci, a performance artist who died earlier this year, was the originator of Seedbed , during which he would position himself in the confined space under a specially constructed ramp and masturbate, allowing the sound of the visitors walking above him to inspire him in his sexual fantasies.

This highlights the notion that performance is selfish and highly individualistic, even when performed as a group, where a performer with their own idea will delve into their own mental and physical construction, insensible to the reaction created.

The paradox of this is that, though it is up to the viewer whether or not they respond to a performance art piece, the very nature of performance means that an audience should be present, because the work is done for the audience and, without an audience, there are certain worlds of performance art which cannot climb the summits without reaction to stimulation and cannot therefore have meaning. Of course, it depends on the piece in question. A similar paradox exists in theatre which does not need to necessarily have an audience at all and may still reach its heights take, for instance, theatre within a rehearsal context without but, without the perceived integrity of performance art.

It is also noteworthy that theatre can end up borrowing from and being greatly influenced by performance art, which has developed from visual arts originally in a way that theatre, existing since time immemorial as a means of telling stories, has not. Besides that, does the presence of a living body in a work of art necessarily make it a performance art? This has been decried by some as sexist, reducing women to tools, but that detracts from the expressive beauty inherent in the movement of the body.

On the one hand, the installations resulted in the creation of works of arts. On the other hand, the installations were performances and works of art in themselves. Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters.

Acting Commons , Performance Studies Commons. Advanced Search. Privacy Copyright. Skip to main content. Chapman University Digital Commons. Abstract Performance art and theatre are both rooted in the same practices and ideas.