What Are Performances For?

My friend Tim Ghali was gracious enough to invite me along to the Sufjan Stevens show on Monday night which ended his Age of Adz tour. I will be sharing my more detailed reflections on the Sufjan show in issue 3 of GENERATE, but I have been reflecting on what his performance, and any performance for that matter, is for?

This show was a production. There were movies, lights, dancers, balloons and costume changes. It wasn’t just an indie rock concert, it was theater. It made a deep impact on me and the audience. It was awesome, inspiring, brilliant, overwhelming, cheesy, chaotic and wonderful. People were having fun. Everyone around me was looking at each other and grinning, and by the end of the show, dancing (except for Tim, who was tweeting).

This was a lot different response than when I saw Sufjan last October. At that show there was a solemnity for the whole affair. There were no background dancers, light shows, costumes, or grunge movies in the background. No one in the audience talked or even whispered. People were just in awe of Sufjan. It was like an art gallery.

Like taking the tranquility of a Bruegel painting and then actually acting out the revelry behind its peaceful state, Sufjan’s music moved from curated art into art performance during this tour. It went from static to dynamic.

Last October I felt like I had gone to church. The show was worshipful. This time around, I felt like I had just been to a grand party. It was like the Giants won the Super Bowl. People were just elated and the high art that has accompanied Sufjan’s performance melted into this ecstatic performance piece, yet I wonder, what is it for?

Really: why do I like multi-media spectacles so much? Why do you? Why do we crave all of our senses to be bursting with wonderment?

I don’t know exactly, which is the answer, I think. Our desire for performance is innate, inside of us, craving connection between the metaphorical and symbolic. In other words, we want our art to come to life, not collect dust in libraries or galleries. We want it to burst out of the seams and consume us. That’s what performances are for.

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To read more about the performance, Jon Pareles wrote an excellent review in the New York Times: “Acoustics Meet Excess on Road to Who Knows Where.”

Featured Photo by Chris Robinson