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Curated category

Performing arts

  • TheatreTheatre is a collaborative form of performing art that places live performers, usually actors, in front of a live audience in a specific place, often a stage.
  • ChoreographyChoreography literally means "dance-writing." The word fuses two Greek roots: "χορεία," a circular dance, and "γραφή," writing.
  • CircusA circus is a company of performers, and for 250 years it has gathered an unlikely crowd under one roof. Clowns, acrobats, trained animals, trapeze artists…
  • Performance artPerformance art is artwork in which the artist is physically present in the work itself. It may be witnessed live or only through documentation, and it can…
  • AcrobaticsAcrobatics is the performance of human feats of balance, agility, and motor coordination. Minoan art from around 2000 BC already shows figures leaping over…
  • Magic (illusion)Magic, as a performing art, has been fooling and delighting audiences since at least 3 BC, when the first recorded trick with three cups and balls was…
  • Performing artsThe performing arts share one demand that the visual arts do not: they need an audience in the room, or at least on the other end of a recording.
  • ClownClowns have existed in human civilization for at least four thousand years. The most ancient clown figures on record were found in the Fifth Dynasty of…
  • EntertainmentEntertainment dedicated the Colosseum in AD 80 with a hundred days of games, packing fifty thousand spectators into a single arena to enjoy blood sport…
  • TelevisionIn 2013-79% of the world's households owned a television set. This was a medium that began as a spinning disk with holes punched into it, a contraption that…
  • Martial artsMartial arts are codified systems and traditions of combat, yet some of the oldest of them survive not in dojos but in dances.