Text as Dance

A groundbreaking investigation into issues of gender, power and representation of sovereignty in French Baroque dance repertoires -- in particular, court ballet -- and in today's performances of them. Mark Franko uses powerful interpretive tools derived from historiography and critical theory, especially the work of German-Jewish philosopher Walter Benjamin, to offer the reader both a historical and a theoretical interpretation of this genre of dance in France (c. 1600-1750), as well as its aftermath and legacy today. Through doing so, he reaches conclusions about how sovereignty and power were both perceived by viewers at the time and how they were represented through dance, given that it was the noble class who devised and performed court ballets. Other thinkers whose work is interrogated to further our understanding of the performance of power in French Baroque court ballet include: Ernst Kantorowicz, Judith Butler, Louis Marin, Eric Auerbach, Georgio Agamben, Jacques Derrida, Pierre Klossowski, Guy Debord, Carl Schmitt, Michel Foucault With wide breadth, and work by historians, philosophers, political scientist, critical theorists, musicologists and dance historians, this is the culmination of a career's-worth of scholarship and research in the field.