The phrase 'ceased to perform' is correct and usable in written English.
You can use it to indicate that someone has stopped doing something. For example, "The singer ceased to perform midway through the concert due to illness."
With the burlesquing of these programs in the 1930s to attract sophisticated audiences, showboats ceased to perform their original function.
The problem in Japan, he said, is that banks, saddled with huge losses on real estate loans, have all but ceased to perform their function as financial intermediaries -- that is, lending to creditworthy enterprises to keep the economy moving.
The flaminica, the wife of the flamen Dialis, participated in his sacredness and official status, and so vital was her association with him and his office that if she died he ceased to perform his functions.
In their letter of resignation, summing up the concerns of all, Goldklang and Zimbalist wrote that "it has become apparent that the business leadership of the league has ceased to perform in an effective, constructive or responsible manner and has failed to manage its capital and other resources in a manner likely to produce successful results".
After their rise to power, the fascist parties in both Germany and Italy gradually ceased to perform the function of maintaining contact between the people and the government, a function that is usually performed by the party in a single-party situation.
Because of the extensive regulation and government intervention, the financial system ceased to perform its basic function of allocating investment.
This is all well known to the cafe proprietors of Venice — the location of the first and last of these stories — who make sure to employ bands or orchestras that never cease to perform.
And a structure hailed as an engineering marvel – called the greatest dam in the world when it was finished in 1935 – would cease to perform one of its primary functions.
The soot contaminates the lubricant and changes the chemical properties resulting in the lubricant ceasing to perform its functions.
Misfolding can result in protein molecules that retain intrinsic function, yet become misrouted within the cell; these cease to perform normally and result in disease.
The functions of some of them, perhaps, would have become so specialized for language-related tasks that they cease to perform any non-linguistic functions at all — and to this extent, perhaps, linguistic nativism would be vindicated.
