ABSTRACT
https://s3-euw1-ap-pe-df-pch-content-public-u.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/9781315269399/9544413c-5f38-4c57-a8fa-cfb1baed2528/content/ifig0002.tif"/>Art, artful, artifice, and artificial comprise a provocative family of resemblances. If art imitates life, conversely, life imitates art. The broad spectrum of performance comprises everything from stage acting and ballet dancing to arguing a case in court to displaying different emotions by smiling, weeping, frowning, or glaring in anger. In fact, people can’t help but perform: displaying and communicating feelings and ideas by means of “codified” behavior, behavior that is shaped in order either to clarify meaning or to be more beautiful – or both. Most codified performances are obviously scripted and scored. But even apparently freestyle PERFORMANCEperformances include strips of behavior that are already set. People use their faces, hands, torso, and legs to perform – and they do so in remarkably similar ways across cultures.
