Martial Arts vs. Performance Arts

What is the difference between a performance art and a martial art? Let us consider for a moment Professional Wrestling:

We can all agree that Professional Wrestling:

1. Is athletically demanding.
2. Requires martial arts related skills like falling and moves that come from martial arts.
3. Training in it could help you in a real life self defense situation.
4. Is NOT a martial art.

Why is it not a martial art? Very simple: no sparring. Sparring delivers on the following promise: practicing this art will give you actionable combat skill when being attacked by another human being. This can only be accomplished through sparring. Only through sparring can you actually practice against someone really trying to attack you... anything short of that is not sparring.

When martial arts show off parts of their martial arts that are NOT sparring, such as forms or Kata for example, they are performing, even if they are performing an exercise that they use to help them get better at sparring. Martial arts that lose sparring, such as many Tai Chi classes for example, have thus degenerated into only being a performance art, and are no longer a martial art. (See also: What is Tai Chi?)

I believe that this is true of all combat sports, self defense systems, combatives, etc.: when they spar they are a martial art, and without sparring they are performance arts. Wrestling is a martial art, but javelin throwing is a performance art. Olympic Boxing IS a martial art, Olympic Archery is NOT a martial art. Don't get me wrong, some Archery people spar with their archery, and they are thus martial artists:

What if in boxing we had an Olympic event for judging heavy bag hitting, using a similar scoring system to how figure skating in judged. Would heavy bag hitting be a legitimate martial art? Of course not, that would be a performance art.  At some martial arts tournaments breaking inanimate objects is considered a martial arts event. This is as ridiculous as a punching bag competition. Breaking inanimate objects is a performance art practiced far and wide outside of the martial arts.

Same goes for competing in Kata, Forms, and fake sparring like Kumite Point Fighting or Stationary Push Hands. All of that is performance arts: impressive conditioning exercises that in the absence of sparring or fighting amount to a performance to the audience. You may as well be having a Yoga competition: meaningless in terms of actionable self defense skills! Performance arts may or may not be used as conditioning exercises for martial arts, but no school without serious sparring should be considered a martial arts school (it should be considered a performance arts school instead.)

I am not saying here that only combat sports are real martial arts. I have been in plenty of traditional martial arts classes that have had their own styles of serious sparring. Let's take the very worst case scenario, Capoeira. It has all the traditional excuses: sparring was forbidden by colonizers, the techniques are too dangerous to spar with, it is supposed to be more dance than self defense, it is a cultural exercise more so than a self defense system, it is more valued as a form of exercise than as a fighting style, etc. etc. This is the sad excuse for a martial art that Capoeira most typically is:

Far less relevant to self defense than say Professional Wrestling, no-contact fake sparring. Clearly more intended to impress potential sexual partners than it is to prepare someone for self defense. But what if I told you that even in the Capoeira community there are people who spar? Check it out:

If Capoeira can spar, so can YOUR martial art. It is really a decision the instructors of the class make, and it is a moral decision: are we going to deliver on the promise of helping our students develop actionable combat skills, or are we just going to make them feel good about themselves?

I will take this one step farther: any system of physical exercise can potentially be a martial art, if it adds sparring. When I first started attending BJJ, the club I attended (called "Summit" and who's logo looked like a mountain) inner circle/higher ranked belt members frequently went rock climbing together. They praised how rock climbing made them stronger on the mat. This particular club at the time was 99% ground fighting, and sport only (no combatives.) But you wouldn't have wanted to get in a fight with any of these guys, they shut down serious grapplers who showed up to the club on a regular basis. It was like a Rock Climbing club that used BJJ tournament rules as a sparring practice, and it was an awesome martial art in and of itself.

I will go so far as to say that Tap Dancing could be a martial art, if it added a relevant type of full contact sparring. Behold: