In the anglophone and more generally Western worlds, "performance" broadly refers to any action that is "performed", that is, being "put into action" or (self-) actualized. This definition emerges from the 1960s speech act theories that pointed out the difference between the "constative utterances" that describe reality and the "performative utterances" that perform an action and change the fact they describe (Austin, 1961; Searle, 1969).

Some scholars prefer to discriminate between performance as a concept, like the "doing" and "showing doing" coined by Richard Schechner (Schechner, 2020, 4) and performance as a "form" or "stage proposal" (Biet, interview by Ariane Zaytseff in "Reprendre les performances de l'avant-garde," June 2013). We will not separate the two.

The point is not to discriminate which among the manifold definitions of performance is the most relevant one, all the more so because the notion of performance takes on a whole new dimension when applied to a larger spectrum of areas or to "cultural performances" in general (Singer, 1972). If we consider performance as "a 'broad spectrum' or 'continuum' of human actions ranging from ritual, play, sports, popular entertainments, the performing arts (theatre, dance, music), and everyday life performances to the enactment of social, professional, gender, race, and class roles, and on to healing (from shamanism and surgery), the media and the internet" (Schechner, 2020, 7), in other words as "all the activity of a given participant on a given occasion which serves to influence in any way any of the other participants" and which unfolds a "pre-established pattern of action" (Goffman, 1959, 15-16), performance is everywhere.

Consequently, if "all behaviour is performative" (Schechner, interview by Ariane Zaytseff, op. cit.), one may question the relevance of the concepts of performance and performativity, especially in the arts and performative arts (theatre, music, dance) where performance is broken down into multiple sub-categories and associated with a wide range of theoretical concepts in a constantly shifting world (action painting, happening, body art, action art movement, postmodernism, …) which often results from a cross-pollination of techniques and art forms.

More recent approaches question the relevance of performance and performance studies. Among them, one underlines that performance has morphed into a polysemic notion without any exhaustive definition and that transcends categories (Goldberg, 2001, 9; Schechner, 2020, Pavis, 2014), which may lead to what dance critic Gérard Mayen calls "the embarrassment of terminology" (Mayen, 2011). The second argues that performance studies are characterized by "an American and British dominance of the field" (McKenzie, 2005), even though it has also been noted that "dance scholars are pushing far beyond traditional definitions of Western theatre dance" (Morris, 2)

It goes without saying that performance raises several epistemological issues, as illustrated in dance as both an impulse and an art form.

---

References :

• Austin, J. L. (1975). How to Do Things with Words (New édition). Oxford University Press.
• Searle, J. R. (1969). Speech Acts : An Essay in the Philosophy of Language. Cambridge University Press. 
• Schechner, R. (2020). Performance Studies : An Introduction (4e édition). Routledge.
• Singer, M. (1972). When a Great Tradition Modernizes : An Anthropological Approach to Indian Civilization (1st edition). Praeger Publishers.
• Goffman, E. (1959). The presentation of self in everyday life. Doubleday. 
• Biet, C., Schechner, R., & Zaytzeff, A. (2013). Reprendre les performances de l’Avant-Garde. Agôn, 6, Article 6. 
• Goldberg, R. (2001). La Performance ; du futurisme à nos jours , (Performance Art from Futurism to the Present, 1988): Vol. Grand format (Thames And Hudson).
• Pavis, P. (2014). Dictionnaire de la performance et du théâtre contemporain. Armand Colin.
• McKenzie, J. (2006). Is Performance Studies Imperialist? TDR (1988-), 50(4), 5‑8.