Performance.

A part from the iconic symbolism and deeper political message of this month's Looking/Learning centerfold piece, Bunny Dance, at its most simple interpretation, is about performance. Four little children are dressed up in rabbit costumes. They wear make-up. They are dancing. They are on stage, putting on a show. For Hung Liu, the work recalls childhood memories of growing up in China, under pressure to perform.

For those of us who grew up in the long shadow of the Depression years, memories of dressing up and putting on a show recall the celluloid, tap dancing images of Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney, and our own attempts at staging plays in our barns and garages, despite the hardships. When the chips were down and competing factions at odds, the neighborhood gang pulled together to make the show go on for a worthy community cause.

For today's youth, tomorrow's childhood memory might be the pageant staged by Dustin Hoffman, Robert De Niro, and Ann Heche, with the same "let's put on a show" spirit in the recent movie, Wag the Dog. They whip up a video version of a nonexistent war with Albania and create a war hero's return that inspires teenagers to follow the fad of throwing old shoes, tied together, over telephone lines all over the country. Folk songs, stirring anthems, and flag-draped events are performed live and on camera with intelligent illusion to con an entire nation into believing in the greatness of a philandering president.

Of course, the performances staged in Wag the Dog, Hung Liu's Bunny Dance, or by Mickey and Judy are not performance art. Performance art pieces are often brief dramas juxtaposing symbolic, sometimes provocative, bits of action. What they do have in common with performance art are the combined elements of the performing arts. As an art form, performance art combines elements of theater, music, dance or movement, and the visual arts. In this issue, performance artist Mark Anderson, in an interview with his father Kent Anderson, a former editor of SchoolArts, notes the interdisciplinary aspects of performance art, describing it as an expressive art form "that satisfies a growing need in our culture."

In the art world, the tradition of performance art can be traced back to the Futurists, Dadaists, and Surrealists, who often staged humorous or provocative events to communicate their ideas. It's an outgrowth of action painting, body art, and happenings. In the classroom setting, the forerunners of performance pieces can be found in the tradition of storytelling, tableaux, living pictures, culminating unit pageants, and school happenings.

With this issue marking the end of the 1997-98 volume year, we wanted to call attention to the art form of performance, because it has been neglected in our publication over the past several years. Admittedly, we get very few articles on performance art in the classroom, but I've observed student teachers doing performance art lessons, and we know the art form is taught and encouraged in many classrooms where communication and expression is valued. As Mark Anderson reminds us, "...telling stories through any combination of music, dancing, acting, and images should be encouraged at any age without needing to call it performance art or theater or any particular thing."

In putting together this issue we are relying on the home schooling experiences of Nanda Currant and middle school experiences of Gaye Greene to give you an idea of how performance art might translate in diverse educational settings. Rounding out the issue are articles, focusing more on related arts experiences, describing how art teachers at the elementary, middle, and high school levels have related the visual arts with one or more of the performing art forms.