Participatory vs. Presentational

Take a look at these three photographs. They were taken in order (top to bottom) within the same performance by a local Charlotte band that plays mainly covers of rock songs in Spanish (and sometimes English). In the first photo, the musicians are on stage, clearly demarcated by a physical space separating them from the audience, and as you might be able to tell, the focus is on them because everyone is looking their way. In the second photo, after playing a few songs, the lead singer has moved out into the crowd, breaching the space between musician and audience. He joins the crowd in singing along to a song everybody knows the words to. Although I wasn't quick enough to capture it on film, the lead singer even points the microphone at several audience members and lets them sing the lyrics. The audience's attention is still focused on the band, but also inward to the space in front of stage. In the third photo, I would argue that the audience's attention (and mine) is no longer focused on stage, but rather to the mass of (male) bodies dancing in a circle that has opened up in front of the stage. The musicians are accompanying the dancers who have become the center of attention. Bumping into each other, roughhousing, moshing, scrumming, whatever you want to call it, the dancers are at play; although it may look haphazard, there is a certain choreography so that no one gets hurt in what at first glance appears to be a violent style of dancing. Those on the outside of the circle are glued in to the dancing as well, whether they are looking for an opportunity to jump in, tensing their arms to protect themselves from an errant body blow, or trying to protect their girlfriends, drinks, or cameras from the melee.

Charles Keil and Thomas Turino, both ethnomusicologists, have defined different types of live musical performance into two large categories- participatory performance and presentational performance. Participatory Performance refers to when "there are no artist-audience distinctions, only participants and potential participants performing different roles, and the primary goal is to involve the maximum number of people in some performance role." Presentational Performance refers to "situations where one group of people, the artists, prepare and provide the music for another group, the audience, who do not participate in making the music or dancing (Turino 2008)." I think we can see some of the back and forth between these two types of performance here. But I'm not sure exactly what it means yet. What do you think?