Performance Perspectives


Book Description

What is 'performance'? What are the boundaries of Performance Studies? How do we talk about contemporary performance practices today in simple but probing terms? What kinds of practices represent the field and how can we interpret them? Combining the voices of academics, artists, cultural critics and teachers, Performance Perspectives answers these questions and provides a critical introduction to Performance Studies. Presenting an accessible way into key terminology and context, it offers a new model for analyzing contemporary performance based on six frames or perspectives: - Body - Space - Time - Technology - Interactivity - Organization Drawing on examples from a wide range of practices across site specific performance, virtual reality, dance, applied theatre and everyday performance, Performance Perspectives addresses the binary of theory and practice and highlights the many meeting points between studio and seminar room. Each chapter takes the innovative form of a three-way conversation, bringing together theoretical introductions with artist interviews and practitioner statements. The book is supported by activities for discussion and practical devising work, as well as clear guidance for further reading and an extensive reference list across media Performance Perspectives is essential reading for anyone studying, interpreting or making performance.




Performance Perspectives


Book Description

What is 'performance'? What are the boundaries of Performance Studies? How do we talk about contemporary performance practices today in simple but probing terms? What kinds of practices represent the field and how can we interpret them? Combining the voices of academics, artists, cultural critics and teachers, Performance Perspectives answers these questions and provides a critical introduction to Performance Studies. Presenting an accessible way into key terminology and context, it offers a new model for analyzing contemporary performance based on six frames or perspectives: - Body - Space - Time - Technology - Interactivity - Organization Drawing on examples from a wide range of practices across site specific performance, virtual reality, dance, applied theatre and everyday performance, Performance Perspectives addresses the binary of theory and practice and highlights the many meeting points between studio and seminar room. Each chapter takes the innovative form of a three-way conversation, bringing together theoretical introductions with artist interviews and practitioner statements. The book is supported by activities for discussion and practical devising work, as well as clear guidance for further reading and an extensive reference list across media Performance Perspectives is essential reading for anyone studying, interpreting or making performance.




Governance and Performance


Book Description

Drawing on recent advances in the social sciences, this volume shows how rigorous, theory-based empirical research can help improve the management of public policies and programs—and how better governance can lead to better performance. These original essays demonstrate how better data and improved statistical techniques have allowed researchers to construct more complex models of governance processes and thereby assess the effects of many variables on policy and program outcomes. They present useful research results that illuminate such issues as automatic grade advancement in public schools, management of federally-funded job-training programs, reducing welfare caseloads, and management of welfare-to-work programs. Illustrating a range of theoretical and methodological possibilities, this book shows how more sophisticated research in public management can help improve government performance.




Performance Measurement


Book Description

Over the course of the past few years, teaching, research, and practice has underscored the importance of performance measurement and criterion development as topics of great interest, considerable debate, and some misunderstanding. It has also become clear that the field needs to address a compendium of research, applications, and issues. Performance Measurement: Current Perspectives and Future Challenges brings together internationally recognized leaders in the field and each examines the subject matter in a way that has never been done--focusing on the dynamic nature of work and the tremendous demands being placed on assessment and measurement as core organizational activities. It also uniquely uses their expertise to provide critical pointers to not only the practical implications of work in the field, but also to the new and continuing issues to be addressed and research to be conducted. The book will be useful to both scientists and practitioners.




Experiencing Liveness in Contemporary Performance


Book Description

This volume brings together dynamic perspectives on the concept of liveness in the performing arts, engaging with the live through the particular analytical focus of audiences and experience. The status and significance of the live in performance has become contested: perceived as variously as a marker of ontological difference, a promotional slogan, or a mystical evocation of cultural value. Moving beyond debates about the relationship between the live and the mediated, this collection considers what we can know and say about liveness in terms of processes of experiencing and processes of making. Drawing together contributions from theatre, music, dance, and performance art, it takes an interdisciplinary approach in asking not what liveness is, but how it matters and to whom. The book invites readers to consider how liveness is produced through processes of audiencing - as spectators bring qualities of (a)liveness into being through the nature of their attention - and how it becomes materialized in acts of performance, acts of making, acts of archiving, and acts of remembering. Theoretical chapters and practice-based reflections explore liveness, eventness and nowness as key concepts in a range of topics such as affect, documentation, embodiment, fandom, and temporality, showing how the relationship between audience and event is rarely singular and more often malleable and multiple. With its focus on experiencing liveness, this collection will be of interest to disciplines including performance, audience and cultural studies, visual arts, cinema, and sound technologies.







Performance-Based Contracts (PBC) for Improving Utilities Efficiency


Book Description

Scientific and Technical Report No. 24 Performance-Based Contracts (PBC) for Improving Utilities Efficiency: Experiences and Perspectives is a compendium of articles written by members of the PBC taskforce. It focuses on new approaches without delegated management to private operator i.e. service contracts, consulting contracts, Alliance approach, public-public partnership. It also mentions new design and generation of more traditional PPPs, (MC, lease, concession), where a larger proportion of performance-based design is being applied. List of Contents: Performance Based Contracts – Setting the scene; PBC and Results Based Financing: the inverse approach; PBC and Energy Efficiency; Internal Performance Contracts: A Case of the National Water and Sewerage Corporation in Uganda; Performance-Based Service Contracts in Navi Mumbai; Financial Comparison of PBCs and Conventional Approach; Tegucigalpa PBC Case Study; Performance Based Contracts – Key Design Issues; NRW Reduction Optimization Framework; How to improve water services performance? Performance Based Contracts (PBC) and Regulatory issues; Peer-to-Peer Partnerships Operational for sustainable water services; Performance Based Contracts in Malawi: Teamwork Works; Performance based affermage contracts; Performance based Contracts, The Aroona Integrated Alliance Experience; Experience from Eastern Europe; NRW Performance Contract – Kingdom of Bahrain; The way forward and perspectives/trends




Performing Care


Book Description

Performing care explores the relation between socially-engaged performance and care and care ethics. It questions how performance might be understood as caring or uncaring and how care might be viewed as an embodied or aesthetic practice --arguing for more careful art and artful care.




Perspectives on the Performance of the Continental Economies


Book Description

Leading economists consider the apparent underperformance of the European economy, testing various explanations against data. Economists disagree on what ails the economies of continental western Europe, which are widely perceived to be underperforming in terms of productivity and other metrics. Is it some deficiency in their economic system—in economic institutions or cultural attitudes? Is it some effect of their welfare systems of social insurance and assistance? Or are these systems healthy enough but weighed down by adverse market conditions? In this volume, leading economists test the various explanations for Europe's economic underperformance against real-world data. The chapters, written from widely varying perspectives, demonstrate the shortcomings and strengths of some methods of economics as much as they do the shortcomings and strengths of some economies of western continental Europe. Some contributors address only income per head or per worker; others look at efficiency and distortions of national choices such as that between labor and leisure; still others look at job satisfaction, fulfillment, and rates of indigenous innovation. Many offer policy recommendations, which range from developing institutions that promote entrepreneurship to using early education to increase human capital.




Investment Performance Measurement


Book Description

Investment Performance Measurement Over the past two decades, the importance of measuring, presenting, and evaluating investment performance results has dramatically increased. With the growth of capital market data services, the development of quantitative analytical techniques, and the widespread acceptance of Global Investment Performance Standards (GIPS®), this discipline has emerged as a central component of effective asset management and, thanks in part to the Certificate in Investment Performance Measurement (CIPM) program, has become a recognized area of specialization for investment professionals. That's why Investment Performance Measurement: Evaluating and Presenting Results the second essential title in the CFA Institute Investment Perspectives series has been created. CFA Institute has a long tradition of publishing content from industry thought leaders, and now this new collection offers unparalleled guidance to those working in the rapidly evolving field of investment management. Drawing from the Research Foundation of CFA Institute, the Financial Analysts Journal, CFA Institute Conference Proceedings Quarterly, CFA Magazine, and the CIPM curriculum, this reliable resource taps into the vast store of knowledge of some of today's most prominent thought leaders from industry professionals to respected academics who have focused on investment performance evaluation for a majority of their careers. Divided into five comprehensive parts, this timely volume opens with an extensive overview of performance measurement, attribution, and appraisal. Here, you'll become familiar with everything from the algebra of time-weighted and money-weighted rates of return to the objectives and techniques of performance appraisal. After this informative introduction, Investment Performance Measurement moves on to: Provide a solid understanding of the theoretical grounds for benchmarking and the trade-offs encountered during practice in Part II: Performance Measurement Describe the different aspects of attribution analysis as well as the determinants of portfolio performance in Part III: Performance Attribution Address everything from hedge fund risks and returns to fund management changes and equity style shifts in Part IV: Performance Appraisal Recount the history and explain the provisions of the GIPS standards with attention paid to the many practical issues that arise in the course of its implementation in Part V: Global Investment Performance Standards Filled with invaluable insights from more than fifty experienced contributors, this practical guide will enhance your understanding of investment performance measurement and put you in a better position to present and evaluate results in the most effective way possible.