Mark Franko
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- August 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780197503324
- eISBN:
- 9780197503362
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780197503324.003.0005
- Subject:
- Music, Dance
This chapter reflects upon the commentary of two literary observers who were also in different ways practitioners of French ballet of the 1920s and 1930s—Jean Cocteau and Paul Valéry—and, of one ...
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This chapter reflects upon the commentary of two literary observers who were also in different ways practitioners of French ballet of the 1920s and 1930s—Jean Cocteau and Paul Valéry—and, of one anthropologist—André Varagnac—who developed the notion of folklore, and folkloric dance in particular as a form of popular innovation or, in other terms, an emergent rather than residual form. With all three, the notion of the popular in dance stood in implicit opposition to the academicism of Russian émigré critics in Paris—notably André Levinson and André Schaïkevitch—who advanced the idea of neoclassicism as the dominant form of dance in modernity. While the Russo-French neoclassicists emphasized the importance ballet’s exploration of its founding technical principles these French commentators had recourse instead to the historical notion of parade or sideshow. This chapter uncovers the dual face of neoclassicism, one formalist and idealist, the other populist. Both Cocteau and Valéry have significant connections with the popular, which I propose to elucidate through the notion of parade or sideshow.Less
This chapter reflects upon the commentary of two literary observers who were also in different ways practitioners of French ballet of the 1920s and 1930s—Jean Cocteau and Paul Valéry—and, of one anthropologist—André Varagnac—who developed the notion of folklore, and folkloric dance in particular as a form of popular innovation or, in other terms, an emergent rather than residual form. With all three, the notion of the popular in dance stood in implicit opposition to the academicism of Russian émigré critics in Paris—notably André Levinson and André Schaïkevitch—who advanced the idea of neoclassicism as the dominant form of dance in modernity. While the Russo-French neoclassicists emphasized the importance ballet’s exploration of its founding technical principles these French commentators had recourse instead to the historical notion of parade or sideshow. This chapter uncovers the dual face of neoclassicism, one formalist and idealist, the other populist. Both Cocteau and Valéry have significant connections with the popular, which I propose to elucidate through the notion of parade or sideshow.
