Perform

The word performance hold a strange sect in my personal vocabulary. As a dancer, to perform can mean anything from standing in front of an audience, executing basic technique, or the attempt to imitate some emotion in the shaping of body or face. When thinking about drama and the dramatic, performance suggests an element of make believe, pretend, or something fake. Myself and some classmates crafted a flashmob that was a fake wedding proposal, which was both a performance to garner attention from those around us, as well as an implication of a fake relationship. Our goal was to try to convince those innocent bystanders that these two people were honestly embarking on the next stage in their lives together. (In fact, we had some concerns about how seriously people would react to the scene; Vy, our actress, took measures to inform her boyfriend that this was for a class to prevent him from reacting in anger).

So, is there something inherent in the definition of performance that implies behavior that is not entirely genuine, even if it is intended to appear that way? The word is derived from very early French, and the original definition implies the completion or carrying out of a specific task. It is not until the popular emergence of the theater in the 1600s (late Renaissance time period) that the association with theatrics became engaged in the definition of performance.

Thus, a double meaning emerges again in a single word: to perform a task is to complete it, to perform a scene is to embody a specific character, emotion, or feeling for an audience. The latter definition corresponds more artisically, which brings up greater questions about the nature of art. Is art real? What is real? Certainly, all art (because it seems impossible to generalize in this way) is not a realistic representation of human experience. However, in order to be relatable, it must have a recognizable and relateable element of truth in which humans can connect and engage with it.

This idea leads me back to the flashmob. We took a human experience, one that is particularly life changing, and performed it in a public place. The performance elicited feelings of distraction, mild interest, disbelief, and confusion. Was the performance overall successful? I'll let you be the judge: