How a scholarly experiment in a Florentine drawing room became the most extravagant art form on earth, and why, four centuries and countless obituaries later, it is still singing. Opera has a reputation problem, and it has had one for most of its life.

How a riding master's circle of sawdust in Georgian London grew into the big top, the flying trapeze and the theatrical spectacle we now call contemporary circus. The circus is one of the few art forms whose birthday we can name.

Every technology we have ever invented has promised to change the story forever, and every time the story has simply changed its clothes. This is the long history of the oldest thing we do.

This article contains affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate, CreARTivity Magazine earns from qualifying purchases.

The idea that painting, music, poetry, sculpture and dance belong together in a single category called art is younger than the piano. Knowing that changes how you read all of them.

The performing arts are the ones that need you in the room. Everything difficult about them, and everything worth defending, follows from that requirement.

Prose is the art form that pretends to have no form. That disguise is the trick, and learning to see through it is most of what reading well means.