Ashton Lazarus

What happens when performance defies social and political boundaries? Performing Transgression offers a new cultural history of non-elite spectacle in Heian Japan (794-1185), uncovering how performances on the margins—boisterous dengaku music and dance, daring sangaku acrobatics, and the infectious lyrics of imayō songs—challenged and fascinated the aristocracy. Ashton Lazarus reveals how these unruly arts were documented by the very elites...