About Performance Arts

A performance art is basically a performance presented via the medium of voice, body and sound by a performer in front of an audience. Traditionally the performance art needs to be interdisciplinary performances. A performance can be carefully orchestrated, random, unscripted or scripted, spontaneous or can also be without the presence of an audience. The recent developments have led to division of performance arts into live and recorded via modern media such as television, movie theatres, etc.

The basic elements involved in a performance art are time, a space, a medium where the performer's body is present, along with a relationship between the audience and the performer. This form of art cannot be sold, bought or traded as other forms of art.

Performance art includes a wide range of activities such as music, dance, circus arts, magic, opera, musicals, etc. A performance art can take place in any setting or venue such as parks, theatres, outdoor amphitheaters, road side, etc. Performance arts have seen an surge in popularity with the advent of modern media and the setting up of numerous schools that train students in the complexities of entertaining people.

Most of the people who step into performance arts are mostly in this because of their love for displaying their talents to audience. It is a form of art that conveys a content based meaning with added drama related since. It does not depict fictions characters who run on scripted conversations. It pushes that audience and the performer to think of new ways and unconventional ways about the way art can be expressed.

History: Performance arts have been practiced in one form or the other since a very long time. In the15th century courts performances were held in royal courts to entertain people. Performance arts were also earlier held in Germany in the German Bauhaus institute, which was founded in 1919. The term performance art was however not termed at this time. Only after the World War II, the performance arts trickled down to the United States.

"Performance art" was termed in the United States in the early 1960s. This term was used to describe performances that took place live and were performed by visual artists with the help of musicians, poets, and film makers. By the 1970s, Performance arts spread to the rest of the world, and got its true meaning in the form of art that is live and was different from theatre. Today the definition of performance art has changed from live performance to recorded performance that is depicted through modern media.

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