Performing arts

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Hello and welcome to Learn English Vocabulary. My name is Jack and I’m making this podcast for you to learn or revise English vocabulary. 

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Introduction

Today, I am going to talk about performing arts and the vocabulary will be suitable for B2 or upper-intermediate learners. The performing arts include all the live events that you might see on a stage or in a cinema. Like many industries, the arts and entertainment industries have been hit hard by the Covid 19 pandemic, with most theatres, venues and cinemas closing. However, I think that it’s a good time to talk about the performing arts so we can say how much we miss these events and what we are looking forward to doing when the pandemic is over … hopefully soon.

Performing arts

I’ll start with the phrase performing arts. It’s easy to understand by talking about the sorts of arts that are included, but the verb perform is good to understand. At its most basic, it means to do an act. You can perform a task on the computer or perform a manoeuvre in your car as part of a driving test. You can perform duties in your job, although this sounds a bit formal and old fashioned and more suited to talking about the police or the military. In the arts, you can perform music or you can perform on stage and it means to do something to entertain people. It usually means singing or dancing, acting or playing music. So the performing arts are the arts that involve these sorts of entertainment.

Music

Music is my favourite of the performing arts so I’ll start with some vocabulary related to music. So, you can see a performance – where you can listen to music at a concert. A concert is a performance by one or a group of musicians. You can see a classical concert in a concert hall. Around christmas, schools and church groups often organise carol concerts that are performances of christmas songs. You can see a pop or a rock concert at a large venue. A venue is another word for the place you see a performance. Sometimes, venues are built with a stage for performances, like theatres or concert halls and sometimes, a pub or alternative building can be a venue for an event. Anywhere that hosts an event is a venue. Pop and Rock concerts are performances of pop and rock music at large venues. Smaller performances in pubs and smaller venues are called gigs. The word gig is informal, it’s cooler than concert or show. Bands often like the thought of gigging as smaller venues are more intimate and are better for fans so you might hear about bands playing gigs at larger venues, but when I think of a gig, I think it means a smaller venue. 

Concerts, shows and gigs

Another way of saying that a band performed a concert is to say a band played a venue. You might hear someone say I saw the Stones play the Albert Hall. I think this is especially true of jazz musicians. It would feel a bit weird to say I went to a Christian Scott concert. You’re more likely to hear someone ask did you see Christian Scott playing at Ronnie Scotts? You can also go to see music played at a music festival. At a festival, an individual performance is a set. You might hear someone ask did you see Stormzy’s set at Glastonbury? 

Opera

Another musical performing art is opera. I don’t like opera. I think I would like to like opera. The performances always look intense and the performers work so hard. However, I just don’t like how it sounds. However, I won’t let my dislike hold you back. So opera has singers and stars. Opera, like theatre, has companies of performers and technicians that put on performances. If you go to see an opera in a special opera theatre, it’s called an opera house. Like Sydney Opera House, one of the most famous buildings in the world. People who love opera and who know lots about it are called opera buffs. A buff is someone who knows a lot about a topic, but it’s usually used in relation to performing arts.

Cinema

So you can be a film buff if you know a lot about films. Cinema is another performing art. When we talk about film as an art form, we normally say cinema. So you can have commercial cinema and you can have independent cinema and art or arthouse cinema. If you are a film buff, you will probably know about movements in cinema, like modernism, and realism. You may be a big fan of avant-garde cinema.

The cinema is, of course, the place where you go to see films projected on a big screen. I used to live near an Imax cinema which is a massive screen that takes special large-format film prints and has loads of really loud speakers. I loved going to the cinema, but haven’t been for a long time now. 

Theatre

A similar performing art is theatre. This is like cinema, but the performance is live, that is, you go to see a performance of actors on a stage. The last theatre I went to was the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford upon Avon. If you go to see a play, you can say that you went to see a production of the play. So you might go to see a production of Romeo and Juliet. I went to see a production of The Taming of the Shrew. 

Dance

There is one more performing art that I have missed and that’s dance. You see, my experience with dance has generally been in nightclubs and has not been much of a performance or especially artistic. That’s not what I’m talking about. Dance as a performing art is a dance on a stage that you would go to see in a theatre. The most famous form of dance as a performing art is ballet. I have never been to see a ballet and have only ever seen ballet dancers in films, but it looks quite athletic and good fun. 

One strange thing to remember when talking about some performing arts is that we use the the definite article, when talking about going to see a performance. Would you like to come to the theatre or the opera next week? I have never been to the ballet. I can’t wait to be able to go to the cinema. We don’t really use the for music performances.

Conclusion

OK, so there you have loads of vocabulary related to performing arts. I hope you all get to go out to the cinema or theatre or to a gig, concert or the ballet very soon.

If you have enjoyed this podcast, please leave me a comment or a review and don’t forget that you can read the transcript for this podcast and complete some language activities on LearnEnglishVocabulary.co.uk.

Thanks for listening.

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2 Comments

  • Majid
    Posted 09/12/2021 at 11:48 am

    Thank you, Jack.

  • MAJID POURKARIMI
    Posted 19/01/2022 at 12:12 pm

    Thanks, Jack.

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