The phrase "a church performance" is correct and usable in written English.
It can be used to refer to a theatrical or musical event that takes place in a church setting, often involving religious themes or community participation.
Example: "The choir will be presenting a church performance this Sunday, featuring traditional hymns and contemporary worship songs."
Alternatives: "a church event" or "a religious performance".
The Madwoman, the main character of Britten's austerely wrenching "Curlew River," a parable for church performance, has lost her son.
Curlew River is officially called A Parable for Church Performance, and this production, brought over from London with its original cast and complete orchestra is, according to the on-line program, the U.S. World Premiere; I can't imagine a more perfect production.
Haydn's "Seven Last Words" is a string quartet originally written for church performance as an Easter meditation, with each movement responding to one of the exclamations Jesus made while being crucified.
Messiah was not intended for church performance nor was it meant to be a typical theater diversion.
Noye's Fludde (1958), Curlew River (1964), The Burning Fiery Furnace (1966) and The Prodigal Son (1968) were for church performance, and the secular The Golden Vanity was intended to be performed in schools.
The first of three "parables for church performance" that Britten wrote in the 1960s, "Curlew River" is an adaptation of Juro Motomasa's medieval play "Sumidagawa" that hovers serenely between Japanese theater and Anglican spirituality.
But where Garrick's ode was focused on himself, this was a true community piece, written after the example of the indestructible (although meticulously fashioned) massed-voice scores that Benjamin Britten wrote for church performance in the 1950s.
Elie is interested in the way such efforts took music that had often been written for church performance and gave it radically new contexts, taking it "into the parlor and out on the highway, into the isolation chamber of the recording studio and to outer space".
In the end, the "Take Me To Church" performance was not, in reality, Polunin's last dance.
