Synopses & Reviews
"... almost every page offers provocative commentary on the aesthetics and politics of modern dance." --Signs
"... [an] important step... in the ineluctable dance by postmodern historians across a bridge that spans the gaps among disciplines, between theory and practice, and betweeen present and past." --Theatre Journal
"This complex and important book needs to be read by anyone interested in dance history or the cultural politics of dance." --Dance Theatre Journal
"Mark Franko's Dancing Modernism/Performing Politics is challenging, groundbreaking, insightful, and, I believe, an important contribution to the field of dance scholarship." --Dance Research Journal
A revisionary account of the evolution of "modern dance" in which Mark Franko calls for a historicization of aesthetics that considers the often-ignored political dimension of expressive action. Includes an appendix of articles of left-wing dance theory, which flourished during the 1930s.
Synopsis
Employing an interdisciplinary approach to dance analysis, Franko draws from performance studies, feminist studies, and cultural theory to study modern dance in relation to sexual, class, and modernist politics, ranging from Isadora Duncan, Martha Graham, and Merce Cunningham to less canonical figures, such as Valentine de Saint-Point, left-wing 'revolutionary' dancers of the 1930s, and Douglas Dunn.
Description
Includes bibliographical references (p. [178]-188) and index.
About the Author
MARK FRANKO is Associate Professor on the Theater Arts Board of Studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz. He is the author of The Dancing Body in Renaissance Choreography and Dance as Text: Ideologies of the Baroque Body.
Table of Contents
Introduction
1. The Invention of Modern Dance
2. Bodies of Radical Will
3. Emotivist Movement and Histories of Modernism: The Case of Martha Graham
4. Expressivism and Chance Procedure: The Future of an Emotion
5. Where He Danced
Appendix: Left-Wing Dance Theory: Articles on dance from New Theatre, New Masses, and Daily Worker
Notes
Bibliography
Index