A Profile of the Performing Arts Industry

Chapter 1

Introduction

The performing arts include music, theater, and dance, and reflect some of humankind’s most essential activities. The format was set in ancient times—live performers, a space to perform in, and a live audience. Indeed, the arts predate civilization. Archeologists have found flutes made of mammoth ivory and bear bone that are 42,000 years old, with carefully carved finger holes and mouthpieces. The earliest cave drawings are equally old. By comparison, farming and domestic animals did not appear until about 10000 BC and writing not until 3000 BC. Some anthropologists even hypothesize that language began as a mixture of singing and speaking.

Miraculously, our Paleolithic art evolved into the works of Sophocles and Shakespeare, ...