Dancing Modernism/Performing Politics

"... 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.

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.