Dance as Text: Ideologies of the Baroque Body

by Mark Franko

Overview

Dance as Text: Ideologies of the Baroque Body is a historical and theoretical examination of French court ballet over a hundred-year period, beginning in 1573, that spans the late Renaissance and early baroque. Utilizing aesthetic and ideological criteria, author Mark Franko analyzes court ballet librettos, contemporary performance theory, and related commentary on dance and movement in the literature of this period. Examining the formal choreographic apparatus that characterizes late Valois and early Bourbon ballet spectacle, Franko postulates that the evolving aesthetic ultimately reflected the political situation of the noble class, which devised and performed court ballets. He shows how the body emerged from verbal theater as a self-sufficient text whose autonomy had varied ideological connotations, most important among which was the expression of noble resistance to the increasingly absolutist monarchy. Franko's analysis blends archival research with critical and cultural theory in order to resituate the burlesque tradition in its politically volatile context. Dance as Text thus provides a picture of the complex theoretical underpinnings of composite spectacle, the ideological tensions underlying experiments with autonomous dance, and finally, the subversiveness of Molière's use of court ballet traditions.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780190466053
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	07/28/2015
Series:	Oxford Studies in Dance Theory
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	5 MB

About the Author

Mark Franko was born in New York City and was a professional dancer before becoming a choreographer and a dance scholar. He has written six books and continues to choreograph and perform.

Table of Contents

List of illustrations Series editor's preface Acknowledgements Abbreviations Preface to Updated Edition Prologue: Constructing the Baroque Body 1. Writing Dancing, 1573 2. Ut vox corpus, 1581 3. Interlude: Montaigne's dance, 1580s 4. Political erotics of burlesque ballet, 1624-1627 5. Molière and textual closure: Comedy-ballet, 1661-1670 Epilogue: Repeatability, reconstruction, and beyond Appendix 1: Notes on Characters of Dance Appendix 2: Original text and translation of Les Fées (1625) Appendix 3: Original text and translation of Lettres Patentes (1662) Appendix 4: The Amerindian in French humanist and burlesque court ballets Notes Bibliography Index

Editorial Reviews

"A revolutionary encounter with historical sources which Franko treats with erudition and imaginative analysis."—Dance Research

"It is not simply a question of 'seeing the new in the old,' but a recognition of the necessity of reconstruction for the purpose of aesthetic progress." —The Drama Review

"Mark Franko is a choreographer, dancer, dance theorist, and dance scholar, and this book reflects the full range of his artistic and intellectual commitments. It is a profoundly interdisciplinary work, which takes as its subject French court dance between 1580 and 1670 but which speaks most urgently to choreographers of the late twentieth century."
—Dance Research Journal

"By analyzing actual examples from [the French Court Ballet] era, Franko unlocks the deep communion between dance and text during that century, while simultaneously making a connection to the present day. Dance as Text: Ideologies of the Baroque Body impresses on many fronts."—Heather Desaulniers Dance Commentary

From the Publisher