PHILOSOPHY OF THE PERFORMING ARTS “David Davies’s Philosophy of the Performing Arts is long-awaited. Not since Paul Thom’s For an Audience has a book in the Anglo-American philosophical tradition focused so clearly, exclusively, informatively, and fairly on all the performing arts. I will use this book in my classes.” James Hamilton, Kansas State University, author of The Art of Theater “In this outstanding philosophical study, David Davies subjects the different, conflicting literatures characterizing works, performances, and their relationships to critical review en route to developing his own integrated theory. Covering classical music to jazz, Shakespeare to Brecht, dance to performance art, this is essential reading for anyone interested in the performing arts.” Stephen Davies, University of Auckland, author of The Philosophy of Art Philosophical inquiry concerning the performing arts has tended to focus on music – specifically classical music – which is assumed to provide a model for understanding the performing arts as a whole. This book engages with this belief and critically explores how the “classical paradigm” might be extended to other musical genres, to theater, and to dance. Taking in key components of artistic performance – improvisation, rehearsal, the role of the audience, the embodied nature of the artistic performer – the book examines similarities and differences between the performing art forms and presents the key philosophical issues that they bring into play. These reflections are then applied to the disputed issue of those contemporary artworks usually classified as “performance art.” Assuming no prior knowledge of the subject matter, this book provides an accessible, yet sophisticated, introduction to the field and a comprehensive framework for thinking about the performing arts.
The Routledge Companion to Audiences and the Performing Arts represents a truly multi-dimensional exploration of the inter-relationships between audiences and performance. This study considers audiences contextually and historically, through both qualitative and quantitative empirical research, and places them within appropriate philosophical and socio-cultural discourses. Ultimately, the collection marks the point where audiences have become central and essential not just to the act of performance itself but also to theatre, dance, opera, music and performance studies as academic disciplines. This Companion will be of great interest to academics, researchers and postgraduates, as well as to theatre, dance, opera and music practitioners and performing arts organisations and stakeholders involved in educational activities.
Alice Marshall explores the question ‘What do you think entertainment is?’ by challenging the reader to consider and form their own views through the provision of interviews, professional opinions and researched topics. Entertainment in the Performing Arts explores a range of sources to enable the reader to develop their own knowledge and understanding of what entertainment equates to. This book provides helpful starting points, including a range of perspectives from interviewed artists, to allow the reader to begin answering this key question for themselves. Throughout the chapters, the reader is presented with guided tasks to allow full immersion in the topics discussed. The author explores why we have an inbuilt need to entertain and be entertained, navigates the reader through the technological enhancements that have altered how we do this, discusses how audience gratification is not always key in entertainment and, furthermore, aims to expertly decipher what the word ‘entertainment’ specifically means. This is an essential text for students of performing arts courses, artists aiming to develop their understanding of their practice and for those with an interest in entertainment.
The Guerilla Performance and Multimedia Handbook is the ultimate guide for artists at all stages of their careers engaged in creating original performance and multimedia work, including hybrids of theatre, visual art, installation, physical theatre, dance, CD-Rom and web design. It covers all aspects of artist support including starting up a company, funding, multimedia tools, and documentation and marketing, and incorporates a useful Yellow Pages section with contact information for production, funding, venues, galleries, publications, festivals, printers, equipment hire, technical support, artists organizations, performance archives, copyright offices and software support. The book is lavishly illustrated and interviews from major artists and directors of some of the leading artist support groups in the UK and US along with illuminating case studies address practical questions and offer indispensable insights into how to succeed in the performance arts.
The Methuen Drama Companion to Performance Art offers a comprehensive guide to the major issues and interdisciplinary debates concerning performance in art contexts that have developed over the last decade. It understands performance art as an institutional, cultural, and economic phenomenon rather than as a label or object. Following the ever-increasing institutionalization and mainstreaming of performance, the book's chapters identify a marked change in the economies and labor practices surrounding performance art, and explore how this development is reflective of capitalist approaches to art and event production. Embracing what we perceive to be the 'oxymoronic status' of performance art-where it is simultaneously precarious and highly profitable-the essays in this book map the myriad gestures and radical possibilities of this extreme contradiction. This Companion adopts an interdisciplinary perspective to present performance art's legacies and its current practices. It brings together specially commissioned essays from leading innovative scholars from a wide range of approaches including art history, visual and performance studies, dance and theatre scholarship in order to provide a comprehensive and multifocal overview of the emerging research trends and methodologies devoted to performance art.
This book is an argument for a particular point of view toward theatre, not a summary or survey of dramatic theory and criticism. The argument centers on the concept of form, a concept that is the rock on which all theoretical and critical works are built, or against which they shatter.
This book contains revised selected papers from the Second International Conference on Information Technologies for Performing Arts, Media Access and Entertainment, ECLAP 2013, held in Porto, Portugal, in April 2013. The 24 papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected for inclusion in this book. They are organized in topical sections named: perspectives and (digital) strategies for cultural heritage institutions; trust, quality and tools for cultural heritage digital libraries; educational services for the performing arts; dance in the world of data and objects; acting and natural interaction; and music and opera of a digital generation.
Anya Peterson Royce turns the anthropological gaze on the performing arts, attempting to find broad commonalities in performance, art, and artists across space, time, and culture. She asks general questions as to the nature of artistic interpretation, the differences between virtuosity and artistry, and how artists interplay with audience, aesthetics, and style. To support her case, she examines artists as diverse as Fokine and the Ballets Russes, Tewa Indian dancers, 17th century commedia dell'arte, Japanese kabuki and butoh, Zapotec shamans, and the mime of Marcel Marceau, adding her own observations as a professional dancer in the classical ballet tradition. Royce also points to the recent move toward collaboration across artistic genres as evidence of the universality of aesthetics. Her analysis leads to a better understanding of artistic interpretation, artist-audience relationships, and the artistic imagination as cross-cultural phenomena. Over 29 black and white photographs and drawings illustrate the wide range of Royce's cross-cultural approach. Her well-crafted volume will be of great interest to anthropologists, arts researchers, and students of cultural studies and performing arts.
