Mark Franko
Mark Franko is an American dance historian, choreographer, and academic. He is an International Fellow of the British Academy and serves as the Laura H. Carnell Professor of Dance at Temple University, where he directs the Institute of Dance Scholarship. Known for bridging politics, psychoanalysis, and performance theory, his scholarship examines Baroque dance and modern/postmodern dance in relation to critical theory and cultural history, and is widely cited in dance studies. He has authored nine books published by academic presses such as Cambridge, Indiana, Wesleyan, Oxford, and Bloomsbury, and has edited or founded key journals and book series in the field.
Early life and education
Franko was born and raised in New York City, where exposure to the arts shaped his interdisciplinary approach to dance. He attended the High School of Performing Arts, majoring in acting, which sparked his interest in performance and movement. He earned a BA in French from the City College of New York and an MA, MPhil, and PhD in French and Romance philology from Columbia University. During his doctoral research on Renaissance dance treatises, he spent a year as a pensionnaire at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris. While in Paris, he studied ballet under Lucienne Lamballe and Hélène Sadovska, whose technical training informed his later choreography.Academic career
Franko began his academic career as Maître Assistant of Lettres Françaises at the Université Paul Valéry. His first U.S. appointment was at Princeton University, followed by a professorship at the University of California, Santa Cruz, where he chaired the Theater Arts Department and directed the Center for Visual and Performance Studies. He has held visiting appointments at Freie Universität Berlin, DOCH Stockholm, Université de Nice, Université Paris 8, and Middlesex University.He is currently the Laura H. Carnell Professor of Dance at Temple University and director of the Institute of Dance Scholarship. From 2009 to 2017, he edited the Dance Research Journal, strengthening its reputation as a leading publication. He founded the Oxford Studies in Dance Theory series, published by Oxford University Press.
Franko has been frequently invited to deliver keynote lectures and guest talks internationally, including the 9th International NOFOD Conference “Dance – Movement – Mobility” at the University of Tampere, the “Les Discours de la Danse” conference at the Centre National de la Danse in Cannes, and the Philadelphia Symposium in History at Bryn Mawr College. He also gives regular public lectures, including Temple University’s Dance Studies Colloquium Series.
In 2025, he was elected an International Fellow of the British Academy.
Choreography
Franko performed with the Paul Sanasardo Dance Company and Movement Research before founding NovAntiqua Dance Company in 1985, which combined historical dance forms with contemporary techniques. His choreography explores politics, emotion, and cultural memory, often reinterpreting historical materials. The New York Times critic Jack Anderson described NovAntiqua works as “modern works inspired by the past.”Notable works include:
- Harmony of the Spheres – Described by Anderson as a meditation on cosmic order and spiritual geometry.
- Le Marbre Tremble – Commissioned by the Toulon Arts Museum for the 1989 “Le corps/la galère: noir et blanc” exhibition, featuring projected images of Pierre Puget’s caryatids to explore themes of suffering and stillness.
- Agamemnon Vengé – Reinterprets classical tragedy with minimalist choreography emphasizing emotional intensity.
- Pasolini – A dance-theater piece created with Alessandro Rumié, performed at the Akademie der Künste in 2008 as part of the Valeska Gert Visiting Professorship.
- Sea Chant Over Long Island – A lyrical work evoking coastal landscapes and human connection.
- Operratics – Commissioned by the Getty Center, this piece has been described as an exploration of operatic themes through fragmented, obsessive movement.
Publications
Franko’s scholarship, combining history, politics, and psychoanalysis, is widely cited in dance studies. His major works include:Books
- Dance as Text: Ideologies of the Baroque Body – Examines Baroque dance as a site of ideological expression. Stephen Orgel wrote in the Times Literary Supplement that it “rewrites dance history.”
- Dancing Modernism / Performing Politics – Special Citation of the de la Torre Bueno Prize.
- The Work of Dance: Labor, Movement, and Identity in the 1930s.
- Martha Graham: In Love and War – The Life in the Work.
- The Dancing Body in Renaissance Choreography.
- Choreographing Discourses: A Mark Franko Reader.
- Text as Dance: Walter Benjamin, Louis Marin and Choreographies of the Baroque.
Edited volumes
- Ritual and Event: Interdisciplinary Perspectives.
- Acting on the Past: Historical Performance Across the Disciplines.
- The Oxford Handbook of Dance and Reenactment.
Selected articles
- Franko, Mark. “Dance and the Political: States of Exception.” Dance Research Journal. 38 : 3–18.
- Franko, Mark. “Repeatability, Reconstruction and Beyond.” Theatre Journal. 41 : 56–74. doi:10.2307/3207924.
Critical reception
His books have been praised in scholarly reviews and are considered foundational to dance studies. Dance as Text has been described as a “pillar of dance studies thinking” by tanz magazine and is frequently assigned in graduate-level dance scholarship courses. Stephen Orgel called it a work that “rewrites dance history.” Theresa Buckland described it as “an ambitious and startling synthesis of dance and literary theory.”
Susan Manning wrote that Dancing Modernism / Performing Politics placed modern dance within broader discourses of embodiment.