Mass Performance: Systems and Citizens

by Kimberly Jannarone

Overview

Mass Performance: Systems and Citizens examines mass performance systems from the first major festival of the French Revolution through the democratic and socialist movements of the nationalizing nineteenth and twentieth centuries in Europe, to totalitarian communist and socialist regimes in the twentieth century, ending with contemporary North Korea. While other scholars have studied specific mass performances, this study synthesizes the phenomenon across centuries and countries, focusing on its systemization. Modern nations defining or redefining their identities not only organized mass performances, but also planned to make those performances a permanent component of nationhood. Kimberly Jannarone reveals that mass performance systems, including synchronized gymnastics to choreographed rallies, encapsulate ideals and debates within emerging nations about the relationship of citizens to each other and to their leaders, playing a generative and reflective role in the culture and politics of the modern era. Mass Performance analyzes the specifics of performance choreography and design, the organizational planning and thinking behind the systems, the material circumstances of each system’s emergence, and the broader intellectual milieu in which they developed. 

Although not a comprehensive study of such events, Jannarone’s analysis of the selected mass performance systems yields new theoretical perspectives on these phenomena, a central focus of her study being how political leaders find ways to create a physically coordinated mass body politic, even during times of hardship and war. By interpreting and historicizing mass assemblies of bodies, this study analyzes the choreographies and organizations that brought thousands of people together as an ensemble and kept them together in meaning-making motion.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780472221172
Publisher:	University of Michigan Press
Publication date:	08/20/2025
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	280
File size:	10 MB

About the Author

Kimberly Jannarone is Professor in the Practice of Dramaturgy and Dramatic Criticism at the David Geffen School of Drama at Yale University.

Table of Contents

Preface

Acknowledgements

List of Illustrations

Introduction: The Mass Performance of Modernity

I. French Revolutionary Festivals

II. Nationalism and Mass Gymnastics

III. The Nationalist Socialization of the Body

IV. Socialism, Spartakiads, and the International Soviet Style of Mass Performance

V. The Grand Mass Gymnastic and Artistic Performance of North Korea

Conclusion: Massing Alone

Notes

Bibliography

Index

What People are Saying About This

Michael Sell

"In Mass Performance, Kimberly Jannarone excavates the foundations of the modern era and discovers there a body politic that not only marches, votes, and wages war but dances and sings. Combining meticulous archival research with the practical perspectives of the choreographer, Jannarone describes the history of a performance form that transformed shapeless crowds into moving symbols of national idea and will."

Marvin Carlson

“Mass performances have been a significant phenomenon culturally and politically from the French Revolutionary festivals to the present. For the first time, Jannarone presents an impressive survey of this activity throughout the modernist period and across the globe."

Richard Schechner

“From the festivals of the French Revolution to the synchronized movements of thousands adulating North Korea’s Dear Leader, the awesome power and mesmerizing beauty of mass displays transforms droplets of individuals into oceans of the collective. Are these displays celebrations of the people or of totalitarian despots? Of the muscular body politic or of human robots? Kimberly Jannarone describes these performances, explains them, and puts them into vital historical perspective.”

Editorial Reviews

“From the festivals of the French Revolution to the synchronized movements of thousands adulating North Korea’s Dear Leader, the awesome power and mesmerizing beauty of mass displays transforms droplets of individuals into oceans of the collective. Are these displays celebrations of the people or of totalitarian despots? Of the muscular body politic or of human robots? Kimberly Jannarone describes these performances, explains them, and puts them into vital historical perspective.”— Richard Schechner, New York University

“Mass performances have been a significant phenomenon culturally and politically from the French Revolutionary festivals to the present. For the first time, Jannarone presents an impressive survey of this activity throughout the modernist period and across the globe."— Marvin Carlson, CUNY

"In Mass Performance, Kimberly Jannarone excavates the foundations of the modern era and discovers there a body politic that not only marches, votes, and wages war but dances and sings. Combining meticulous archival research with the practical perspectives of the choreographer, Jannarone describes the history of a performance form that transformed shapeless crowds into moving symbols of national idea and will."— Michael Sell, Indiana University of Pennsylvania

From the Publisher