As performance art becomes more popular, it is changing. Many are embracing elements of dance, film, theatre and sculpture, even street theatre and rap music. “Performance art was stuck in the 1970s: protest, people cutting themselves,” RoseLee Goldberg, the founder of Performa, said last year. “Some years ago I wondered: why don’t we have visually dazzling, emotional and intellectually challenging performance? Why does everything have to be a single gesture performed on the Lower East Side?”