Performing Arts and Sustainability, New Prospects for Cultural Transformations

Abstract:
The performing arts are not just an art form, creative practice, or method of representation, as they are increasingly seen as a vital medium for embodied research and as an analytical framework. The performing arts have a long and significant history of creative engagement with public issues and continue to play an influential role in the development and transmission of ideas, attitudes, and calls to action regarding pressing issues.
Art has a rich history of reflecting on and influencing social change. This paper examines the potentials of the performing arts in the twenty-first century for sustainable development, in which the artist may play a major role through “cultural sustainability”. The paper explores the potentially effective role of the performing arts in redirecting behavior and establishing social norms that are sorely lacking today, where active culture and sustainable development go hand in hand.
Research problem: The research problem is to answer the following questions:
- What is meant by cultural sustainability? And how can it contribute to achieving sustainable development?
- How can the performing arts contribute to achieving sustainability as a process of societal change, through reflexive practices?
- Can sustainability be present and relevant in the performing arts?
Research objectives: The objectives of the research are to study the role of culture and arts in changing societies, in integration with sociology. The research also aims to show the potential role of the performing arts in achieving sustainability through creative practices; where "sustainable development" is a comprehensive concept that revolves around reconciling (social justice) and (environmental safety); to achieve the well-being of all life systems on the planet.
Research Methodology: Through the descriptive-analytical approach, the research deals with the concept of sustainable development and its relationship to culture, and how the performing arts can act as catalysts for sustainable development in the stage of reflexive modernity. Through the case study approach, the research presents applied contemporary models of the performing arts for sustainability, where artistic interventions in society can work to change social structures.
Keywords: sustainable development - culture - performing arts - reflexivity - ecological theater.