The performances of my works in the last 10 years are probably equal to all the previous years put together. There are so many venues now and there is a completely new public for opera that's grown up outside of the traditional core opera public.
No machines will ever truly fully figure the brain out, because the brain's performance is constantly altered or else constrained by this inanimate, rogue artifact you can't control, namely, speech.
There's something in human performance that is very smooth and very fluid, and at the same time it can be very precise, and that can take a lot of time, trial and error.
Whenever I did a good performance, my Dad and my uncles, who were rabid movie fans, took me to the movies. There began my underlying love affair with film.
I love Viola Davis. I call her 'Queen.' I think she's phenomenal. She's so raw and so bold. When I first saw her was in 'Doubt,' and she just changed everything for me. Her performance was unlike anything I had ever seen before, and I think she's phenomenal.
My general take on American music since 1969 is that it's just getting stiffer and people are getting more uptight - audience, performance, and palace guard.
The truth is, a director wins an Oscar for a writer's script and actors' performances.
Royalties are not how most writers or musicians make their living. Musicians by and large make a living with a relationship with an audience that is economically harnessed through performance and ticket sales.
Even though reality TV is very manipulated, it's all manipulated so that something real happens. And so, our job in this era is to make that real thing happen, because nobody wants to see any more manipulated, pre-planned performances. That era is over.
Well, you would have to say what is the criteria to determine the success of any merger? It would have to be that the companies are stronger financially, that they took market share, and they are on a very steady footing in terms of their performance.
A theatre receives recognition through its initiative, which is indispensable for first-rate performances.
In most cases, my favorite Jethro Tull songs will be determined by how I feel about them as live performance songs, not by the recorded identity.
My skirt fell off on stage during a performance of Hairspray on Broadway, revealing my fat suit over my own natural fat suit. I turned to the audience and said, 'Now you know why I spent six years in a square.'
The casting of 'Slumdog Millionaire' is a dream. Anil Kapoor, as the sleazy TV host, diamonds winking in his earlobes, has never been better; the quietly understated Irrfan Khan turns in another bravura performance as the police inspector whose questioning brings out Jamal's story.
Yesterday morning I amused myself with an exercise of a talent I once possessed, but have so neglected that my performance might almost be called an experiment. I cut out a dress for one of the women.
I would love to document the Roots; I think they have an interesting story. I have a curiosity about them. Their musicality and their live performances I think would be great, and I have a feeling that there are stories behind each one of them.
With high fashion, it's a performance. You're trying to interpret a fantasy in a very physical way, and you really are playing a character. I've played men, dead people, famous people, historical icons, and it's no mean feat. It's quite an insular experience even though the crowd is in front of you and there's an expectation.
As much as we think of performance management as numeric and thus perfectly quantifiable, it is as much a product of context and social science as the products we design and develop.
I've done scenes in films that I felt like the performance was better in certain takes, but they couldn't use them because it didn't match what the person was doing when they came around and the camera was on them.
It is enough that we set out to mold the motley stuff of life into some form of our own choosing; when we do, the performance is itself the wage.
To pay out millions upon millions of dollars in bonuses for incomplete work, poor performance, and unacceptable products is the height of government waste and mismanagement.
My first impression when I made it through was 'Good, because I'm going to prove to you that I deserve to be here', because they told me that sometimes I lack confidence in my performance and sometimes I'm not as consistent as they'd like me to be.
I generally find an affinity with a lot of the people I play and I suppose if I didn't feel an affinity for them then they wouldn't be particularly good performances.
So, sometimes, when I'm not happy with my performance and I have to think, I will think in English.
I am realizing and accepting my role as a tap dancer in this world is not only to tap dance for the sake of performance, but through tap dance be able to share and spread a message and congregate with people I would not necessarily be with had it not been for dance.
I don't really unwind after a performance. I'm still pumped up and just want to get back on stage.
Quite a few operas are still being commissioned around the world, although nothing apart from audience popularity can ensure more than a few performances.
I still get thrilled by the energy that is a live performance, the fear and the panic and the electricity that happens on the night. I think jolting myself every once in a while with that fear is a good thing for me.
Claude Rains was what we call an actor's actor. He was very involved with himself and his performance.
In the 1960s when the recording studio suddenly really took off as a tool, it was the kids from art school who knew how to use it, not the kids from music school. Music students were all stuck in the notion of music as performance, ephemeral. Whereas for art students, music as painting? They knew how to do that.
I came back to Philips and quickly realised that the TV business had a major performance issue and some structural challenges. Rather than try to tweak it and sit things out, we said we had to go for a structural solution.
You go for the quality of the performance, not the longevity of it.
As a musician, I have always strived for my albums and live performance to render a sound as close as possible to perfection.
I just try to touch people's hearts in a way through skating, so they're not just witnessing a performance, they're feeling a performance and they're a part of it.
I was driven to give the best possible performance I could based on the material that was given to me and that material was documentary footage of the President speaking to people.
That's what separates actors - I'll take any risk for a performance.
