The Work of Dance: Labor, Movement, and Identity in the 1930s / Edition 1

by Mark Franko

Overview

In this insightful new book, Mark Franko explores the many genres of theatrical dancing during the radical decade of the 1930s and their relationship to labor movements, including Fordist and unionist organizational structures, the administrative structures of the Federal Dance and Theatre Project, the International Ladies Garment Workers Union, and the Communist Party. Franko shows how the structures of labor organization were reproduced and acted out — but also profoundly reasoned through in corporeal terms — by choreography and performance of the proletarian mass dance, the chorus line of the Ziegfeld Follies and the reflexive backstage musical film, Martha Graham’s modern dance, the revolutionary dance movement of the proletarian avant-garde, African-American “ethnic” opera-ballet, and Lincoln Kirstein’s “American” ballet.

The contributions of many important personalities of American theatrical, visual and literary culture are included in this study. Franko's focus extends from the direct impact of performances on audiences to the reviewing, reporting and photography of print journalism.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780819565532
Publisher:	Wesleyan University Press
Publication date:	06/10/2002
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	272
Product dimensions:	6.90(w) x 9.90(h) x 0.60(d)

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Dance/Work/Labor
Part I: Emotion and Form
Organization and Performative Economies of Work
Essentialized Affect and E/motion
Metakinetic Interpellations
Cultural Cross Dressing as Class Construction part II Genre and Class
The Ballet-versus –Modern Wars as Ideology
Lives of Performers: News, Sex, and Spectacle Theory
Strikes, Revues, and the Organized Dancer
Notes
Bibliography
Index
About the Author

What People are Saying About This

Jane Desmond

“Written with clarity and urgency, this book will be of interest not only to dance scholars, but also to social historians, labor historians, and art historians, as well as all who seek a better understanding of the relationship between the arts and political change.”

Randy Martin

“The Work of Dance enlarges conventional understandings of labor and of progressive politics through an elaboration of the agency of dance in performance. The book should garner the attention of those seeking to grasp that which made the 1930s in the United States so fruitfully contentious.”

Editorial Reviews

Dance and labor may seem an unlikely pairing, but the author of this scholarly work proves otherwise with a look at the relationship between theatrical dancing and the progressive politics of the 1930s. Drawing on a cast ranging from modern dance pioneers Anna Sokolow and Jane Dudley, to the less-celebrated chorines of backstage film musicals, to organizations such as the Federal Dance and Theatre Project (part of the WPA), the International Ladies Garment Workers Union (ILGW), and the Communist Party, Franko (Dancing Modernism/ Performing Politics) "explores how work in the 1930s was configured by dance, and how dancers performed cultural work." A central thesis is that the organizational structure of labor and political groups was replicated and even put into action by the choreography and performances of the day, as seen in the modern dance creations of Martha Graham, the avant-garde revolutionary dance movement, and even the chorus lines of the Ziegfeld Follies. Enhanced by a generous bibliography and detailed notes, this title should find a place in specialized collections in dance, labor, or social history. Carolyn M. Mulac, Chicago P.L. Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal