Event

Building on his groundbreaking monograph "Dance as Text: Ideologies of the Baroque Body" and confronting the interdisciplinarity of early-modern performance, dance scholar Mark Franko discusses a piece he created in 2007 based on a 1620 Neapolitan work, examining it in the context of other contemporaneous Italian works (e.g., Monteverdi) and in light of French philosophical reflections.  (Pre-circulated paper available for those attending the talk, please contact mauroca@sas.upenn.edu .)
Mark Franko is Laura H. Carnell Professor of Dance and Coordinator of Graduate Programs in the Dance Department of the Boyer College of Music and Dance at Temple University. Franko danced professionally for the Paul Sanasardo Dance Company, Movement Research (the Oskar Schlemmer Bauhaus Dances), and NovAntiqua, the company he founded in 1985. In a career bridging the theory and practices of historical and contemporary dance his choreography has been produced at Lincoln Center Out-of-Doors Festival, the Berlin Werkstatt Festival, The Getty Center, the Montpellier Opera, Toulon Art Museum, the Akademie der Künste (Berlin), the Mozarteum (Salzburg), Grove Theater (London), Stuk Festival (Leuven) and in many New York and Bay Area venues. Besides "Dance as Text” (1993, revised ed. forthcoming), Prof. Franko is the author of five books: "Martha Graham in Love and War: The Life in the Work" (Oxford University Press), "Excursion for Miracles: Paul Sanasardo, Donya Feuer, and Studio for Dance (1955-1964)," "The Work of Dance: Labor, Movement, and Identity in the 1930s," "Dancing Modernism/Performing Politics," and "The Dancing Body in Renaissance Choreography." He edited "Ritual and Event: Interdisciplinary Perspectives" (Routledge) and co-edited "Acting on the Past: Historical Performance Across the Disciplines" (Wesleyan). He is the editor of Dance Research Journal (Cambridge University Press) and founding editor of the Oxford Studies in Dance Theory book series.Prof. Franko will be a guest speaker for Musc 230: Baroque Opera (Prof. Mauro Calcagno).