A transcultural analysis of performance reveals that the performer’s work is the result of the fusion of three aspects which reflect three different levels of organization:
1) The performer's personalities, their sensibilities, their artistic intelligence, their social personae: those characteristics which make them unique and once-only.
2) The particularities of the traditions and socio-historical contexts through which the once-only personality of the performer is manifest. 3) The use of physiology according to extra-daily body techniques. The recurrent and transcultural principles on which these techniques are based are defined by Theatre Anthropology as the field of pre-expressivity. (Barba & Savarese, 1991/1999, p. 5)
Barba, Eugenio and Nicola Savarese. (1991/1999).
A Dictionary of Theatre Anthropology. The Secret Art of the Performer.  London: Routledge.
Barba, Eugenio
L’archipel du théâtre. Contrats Bouffonneries (hors série). Carcassone France: Offset Sival. 1982.
Barba, Eugenio. 
Beyond the Floating Islands.  New York: PAJ Publications,        1986.
Barba, Eugenio and Nicola Savarese. 
A Dictionary of Theatre Anthropology. The Secret Art of the Performer.  London: Routledge, 1991.
Performer.  London: Routledge, 1991.