Street performance or busking is the practice of performing in public places, for gratuities, which are generally in the form of money and edibles. People engaging in this practice are called street performers, buskers, street musicians, minstrels, or troubadours.
Street performance dates back to antiquity, and occurs all over the world.
Performances can be just about anything that people find entertaining. Performers may do acrobatics, animal tricks, balloon twisting, card tricks, caricatures, clowning, comedy, contortions and escapes, dance, singing, fiddling, fire eating, fire breathing, fortune-telling, juggling, magic, mime and a mime variation where the artist performs as a living statue, musical performance, puppeteering, snake charming, storytelling or recite poetry or prose as a bard, street art such as sketching and painting, street theatre, sword swallowing, and even put on a flea circus.
Read more about Street Performance: History, Forms, Legislation, Celebrity Anecdotes
Famous quotes containing the words street and/or performance:
“If you would learn to write, ‘t is in the street you must learn it. Both for the vehicle and for the aims of fine arts you must frequent the public square. The people, and not the college, is the writer’s home.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“They say all lovers swear more performance than they are able, and yet reserve an ability that they never perform; vowing more than the perfection of ten, and discharging less than the tenth part of one.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)