Performance

In disciplinary studies of theater, dance, and music, “performance” is defined as the set of artistic choices an actor, dancer, or musician makes in realizing a preexistent text—whether that text is a dramatic script, a choreographic design, or a musical score. Over the past few decades, however, many scholars in American studies and cultural studies have redefined “performance” as a mode of cultural production composed of events bound in time and framed in space. Whereas the disciplinary usage of the noun “performance” implies an opposition to “text,” the new usage understands it as a framed event that may well deploy textual elements but cannot be reduced to the realization of preexistent scripts or scores. Like other modes of cultural production, performance takes the form of diverse genres that emerge, alter, and disappear over time. Powwow, jubilee and Jonkonnu, melodrama, minstrelsy, vaudeville, world’s fairs, modern dance, the Broadway musical: all are distinct genres of performance that have circulated within and without US culture.