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The Fascist Turn in the Dance of Serge Lifar is the first book not only to discuss the resistance to Lifar in the French press at the start of his much-mythologized career, but also the first to present substantial evidence of Lifar's collaborationism and relate it to his artistic profile during the preceding decade.
List of contents
- Foreword
- Frédéric Pouillaude
- Acknowledgements
- Preface
- Introduction: The Transnational Path Toward Corporeal Fascism
- Chapter One: A Genealogy of Dance Modernity: Movement Artifacts, Mythic Principles, and Archival Others
- Chapter Two: The Critical Reception of Serge Lifar (1929-1939)
- Chapter Three: The Dancer as Statue and the Geo-Politics of Neoclassicism
- Chapter Four: Parade as a Critical Concept in Interwar Dance Theory: from Jean Cocteau and Paul Valéry to André Varagnac
- Chapter Five: Serge Lifar and the Question of Collaboration with the German Authorities under the Occupation of Paris (1940-1949)
- Chapter Six: From the Neoclassical Turn to the Baroque Re-turn
- Selected Bibliography
- Index
About the author
Mark Franko is Laura H. Carnell Professor of Dance at Boyer College of Music and Dance, Temple University. His most recent books are Choreograping Discourses: A Mark Franko Reader (2019), and (editor) The Oxford Handbook of Dance and Reenactment (2017). He was editor of Dance Research Journal and he is founding editor of the Oxford Studies in Dance Theory book series. Franko received a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation fellowship in 2018-19 to complete this book.
Summary
The Fascist Turn in the Dance of Serge Lifar is the first book not only to discuss the resistance to Lifar in the French press at the start of his much-mythologized career, but also the first to present substantial evidence of Lifar's collaborationism and relate it to his artistic profile during the preceding decade.
Additional text
Franko's new book is both provocative and brilliantly researched, offering a re-thinking of Lifar's life and work while re-shaping received perceptions of French modernism and conventional accounts of what constitutes 'neoclassicism' in dance. The book is ambitious and ground-breaking and situates dance theory and dance history in direct relation to the exigencies of political power.
