the Cooper Union School of Art Interdisciplinary Seminar
Mark Franko
Archaeological Choreographic Practices: Forsythe with and against Foucault
This lecture took place on October 20th, 2011 at 7:00 pm in the Wollman Auditorium at the Cooper Union
Lecture introduction
Although Michel Foucault never wrote of dance as an example of a bodily discipline in the classical age, he did affect the art of contemporary ballet through his influence on the work of choreographer William Forsythe. This talk interprets Foucault’s influence on Forsythe up until the early 1990s and also examines how Forsythe’s choreography ‘responded’ to issues of agency, inscription and discipline that characterize Foucault’s thought on corporeality. Ultimately, it asks whether Forsythe’s use of Foucauldian theory leads to a reinterpretation of inscription in Foucault.
About Mark Franko
Mark Franko is Professor of Dance in the Theater Arts Department at UCSC and Director of the Center for Visual and Performance Studies. He is editor of Dance Research Journal and founding editor of the Oxford Studies in Dance Theory. His book Martha Graham in Love and War: the life in the work is being published by Oxford University Press (Spring 2012). His books include Dance as Text: Ideologies of the Baroque Body, Dancing Modernism/Performing Politics and The Work of Dance: Labor, Movement, and Identity in the 1930s. He edited Ritual and Event: Interdisciplinary Perspectives, and co-edited Acting on the Past: Historical Performance Across the Disciplines.