Performing arts center

Performing arts center/centre (see spelling differences), often abbreviated as PAC, is used to refer to:

Some performing arts center organizations act as sole presenter for events using the venues within the center, but most also frequently rent their performance spaces to other performing arts presenters or self-presenting performing arts groups. Examples of this practice is the Celebrity Series of Boston renting venues in Boston's Citi Performing Arts Center.

New performing arts centers emerged in the latter part of the 20th century as a means of generating new investment and increased economic activity and thus, a means for revitalizing neighborhoods as patrons are drawn to local restaurants and other businesses. PACs became a draw for touring shows and eventually included visual art in their facilities. Today, these centers are valuable civic resources that provide education, access, exchange of creative discourse, opportunities for cultural expression and awareness.

Arts centre

An art centre or arts center is distinct from an art gallery or art museum. An arts centre is a functional community centre with a specific remit to encourage arts practice and to provide facilities such as theatre space, gallery space, venues for musical performance, workshop areas, educational facilities, technical equipment, etc.

In the United States, "art centers" are generally either establishments geared toward exposing, generating, and making accessible art making to arts-interested individuals, or buildings that rent primarily to artists, galleries, or companies involved in art making.

In Britain, art centres began after World War II and gradually changed from mainly middle-class places to 1960s and 1970s trendy, alternative centres and eventually in the 1980s to serving the whole community with a programme of enabling access to wheelchair users and disabled individuals and groups.

In the rest of Europe it is common among most art centres that they are partly government funded, since they are considered to have a positive influence on society and economics according to the Rhineland model philosophy. A lot of those organisations originally started in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s as squading spaces and were later on legalized.

Performing arts

Performing arts are art forms in which artists use their voices and/or the movements of their bodies, often in relation to other objects, to convey artistic expression—as opposed to, for example, purely visual arts, in which artists use paint/canvas or various materials to create physical or static art objects. Performing arts include a variety of disciplines but all are intended to be performed in front of a live audience.

Performers

Artists who participate in performing arts in front of an audience are called performers. Example of this include actors, comedians, dancers, magicians, circus artists, musicians, and singers. Performing arts are also supported by workers in related fields, such as songwriting, choreography and stagecraft.

A performer who excels in acting, singing, and dancing is commonly referred to as a "triple threat". Well-known examples of historical triple threat artists include Gene Kelly, Fred Astaire, and Judy Garland.

Performers often adapt their appearance, such as with costumes and stage makeup, stage lighting, and sound.