Mark Franko's 'La Danse comme Texte' Explores Baroque Ballet's Ideological Bodies

Mark Franko's book 'La Danse comme Texte: Idéologies du corps baroque' (Éditions Kargo & L'Éclat) investigates 17th-century court ballet as a site where body and text intersect. Franko reconstructs two opposing paradigms: geometric dance, where choreography functions as a readable text dominated by writing, and burlesque dance, which privileges movement, individuality, and illegibility. He traces how Louis XIV's establishment of the Académie Royale de Danse in 1661 neutralized these paradigms to serve state power, while Molière's comédies-ballets synthesized them. The book concludes with an epilogue on historical reconstruction in contemporary dance, arguing for seeing the new in the old rather than the reverse. Franko, both scholar and choreographer, positions postmodernism as a continuation of modernism, not a rupture.