Humans are biologically wired to seek connection through collective artistic experiences.

Cultural forms once dismissed—like jazz or rock—often become lasting generational touchstones.

Shared music and performance can synchronize breathing, heart rate, and emotional states.

During a recent press tour, Timothée Chalamet joked about ballet and opera: “Hey—keep this thing alive,” he said with a laugh, before adding that talking about them probably cost him “14 cents in viewership.”

The joke reflects a broader assumption about the performing arts: that they are beautiful but increasingly irrelevant in a world dominated by streaming and short-form entertainment. Far from being obsolete, shared artistic experiences may be one of the few remaining cultural spaces where we meet our need for connection.

As artists, educators, and advocates for the neuroarts, we understand the sentiment. From a market perspective, the performing arts can feel fragile. We live in an era of hyper-personalized streaming, AI-generated content, and algorithms designed to keep us scrolling individually. A three-hour opera or a traditional ballet can seem like a relic of a bygone age.

The Enduring Appeal of Shared Artistic Experiences

Why do Chalamet’s own films succeed? Why does The Nutcracker remain a blockbuster? The answer isn’t just good marketing or celebrity pull. We are wired for shared artistic experiences. Art is not just “content” to be consumed. It is the connective tissue of our shared history and part of how our nervous systems learn.

You’re not wrong, Timothée, but you may need to "get out of the cave" of modern digital consumption to see the light of what art actually does for the human species.

More than a century ago, the 1913 premiere of The Rite........

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