Mark Franko's The Fascist Turn in the Dance of Serge Lifar: Interwar French Ballet and the German Occupation is a meticulously researched and well-presented history of one of the most cryptic and fascinating figures in early twentieth-century dance, who lived through a particularly volatile political moment in the twentieth century. The book presents a complex and thorough argument arc that draws on several strands that come together coherently to present a never before discussed relationship between Lifar, fascism, and neoclassicism between the two world wars.

The Ukrainian born star dancer, ballet master, and choreographer Serge Lifar (1905–1985) paralleled nearly all of the twentieth century, yet the focus here is on his work between the World Wars into the Occupation, showing political and moral crises at the same time as exposing rigorous artistic and aesthetic genealogies. The neoclassical turn in ballet preceded Lifar's arrival in Paris in the 1930s and always carried political weight, yet the focus is on the collision of the rise of fascism in France and the development of Lifar's style. Reading Lifar alongside others whose voices were central in this turn—Paul Valery, Jean Cocteau, André Levinson, and even T. S. Eliot—Franko supplies a much-needed detailed historiography of the neoclassical turn in ballet. Bringing together both Russian influences in French ballet and German intrusion into French political life, an urgent crossroads arises from the analyses. Dance scholarship has not taken Lifar to account until now for his political and aesthetic collaborationism and his unique contribution to what Franko terms “corporeal fascism” (231–234), drawing on multiple archival and theoretical sources, from Carl Schmitt and Michel Foucault to Raymond Williams. The book combines a microhistorical method in examining Lifar, and a literary-exegetical method when interrogating neoclassicism. The question probing multiple arguments of the text concerns relationships between temporalities; so-called turns, which are also a form of intervention, are never estranged from social and political context but always bringing past and present together. Ballet, in neoclassical constellation, “appears as a neutral language through which other languages gain form and shape” (39), yet Franko's thorough analysis probes this guise of neutrality. Encompassing influences from ballet's original “noble dance,” folk dance, and other art forms, classicism presents itself as a permanent form. In the twentieth-century neoclassicist discourse on ballet, classicism converges with an impulse to abstraction and a philosophy of objectivism. Franko shows forcefully that “classical ballet … whenever it referenced seventeenth-century French culture in the process of becoming neoclassicism, was a historical fiction—a myth—in that it fabricated images of another time from which it drew its current energy and vitality” (52).This helps set the scene for an investigation of neoclassicism in the Paris Opera in the 1930s during Lifar's tenure there as star dancer and ballet director, leading from the influence of the Ballet Russes and Diaghilev era. Despite starting out with negative reviews, turning away from the style of his lost mentor but also toward expressiveness rather than formalism, Lifar produced a style that was uniquely individualistic. He was especially challenged by André Levinson in the 1930s, critiqued more for his choreography than dancing. Compared to Vaslav Nijinsky, Lifar would never rise to the critical acclaim the other protégé of the Ballets Russes would achieve and would always dance in his shadow. Sustaining an idea of a dancer's body existing in ideological vacuum, Franko shows forcefully that Lifar showed totalitarian tendencies before the war.

Another influence on neoclassicism was folklore. Delving into the 1935 Archives Internationale de la Danse's exhibition on folkloric dance Franko shows nationalistic influences on Lifar's art. “Neoclassical ballet (on this account) had the sole claim to survival and even to archival authenticity” (136). The politically aware reader is already seeing both the arguments of the book collide (the book carries many different arguments but two central ones), with early warning signs of fascistic tendencies in art. The question of innovation and repetition in form haunts the argument focusing on ballet, folklore and aesthetics. Now turning to Theodore Adorno, Franko offers an expanded notion of neoclassicism as a “variety of modernism for which the term objectivism was used around mid-century” (176). Thus, Franko moves to a truly fascinating element of the argument, Lifar's collaborationism. Shifting from theoretical discussion to draw directly on archives Franko shows that there was coherence between Lifar's aesthetics and his collaboration with Nazi Germany during the Occupation of France. Both his writing and choreography show consistent and ongoing work that was designed to appeal to German authorities. A range of archival evidence (perhaps most startling, pride in showing Hitler around the Opera Paris on June 23, 1940), Lifar was consistent in his views, which included pronounced and overt antisemitism. Previously erased from his historiography and the history of dance, Franko rehabilitates in full Lifar's fascist turn. Most importantly, Franko reveals the reaction to this turn, which included interrogation, trials and various forms of boycott after the war which had made him persona non grata in the world of dance. The process of de-Nazification and postwar anti-fascism outlines the counterfactual to Lifar's turn that had haunted his postwar life. Franko moves to present a theoretical discussion of corporeal fascism, drawing on diverse sources such as Carl Schmitt, Claude Lefort and George Bataille to discuss corporeal fascism as shifting between the state of exception and desire for absolute power. Franko ends on postwar reactions to Lifar that conclude in the 1980s and early 1990s.

A central question that arises from the methodological, temporal and argumentative arcs of the book is: what are the stakes in showing the fascist turn did indeed take place, and that Lifar was indeed a collaborationist? The use of the term ‘fascism’ is galvanizing for the twenty first century reader. Over the past few years, much writing has delved into the question of whether new populist right wing governments, from Viktor Orban through Narendra Modi and Jair Bolsonaro to Benjamin Netanyahu and of course Donald Trump, are indeed fascists, and especially what that may entail in resisting them. The notion of collaborationism which is invoked by Franko is potentially a significant contribution to assessing the relationship between art and politics beyond this specific case study. Franko utilizes many theoretical sources that range from different temporalities to understand the period about which he writes, but this cross historical reading only goes in one direction; drawing on more contemporary sources to unravel the case study, but never thinking of the case study as illuminating contemporary sources and discussions. Perhaps especially crucial are the references to recently departed Ernesto Laclau, who, with Chantalle Mouffe provide some of the only continuous narratives between fascism and readings of populism, but equally so many other sources invoked in the book could have provided the reader a clear and precise connection to the moment from which Franko writes and what lessons can be derived for our current times. As Cornel West (2020) wrote about the current fascist turn in American society, in the pre-election moment of 2020: “And so you have very deep racist and white supremacist sensibilities that people can easily mobilize in order to make sense of their fears. (But) it then creates a difficulty of class solidarity, of human solidarity.”

Specifically, the question of responses to these collaborationist tendencies in light of our contemporary dilemmas are troubling the text. Many anti-fascists from Lifar's time till our days have endorsed and furthered the use of boycotts and cultural divestment to take an ethical and political position when aesthetics and politics collide to create fascism. Lifar indeed was part of one of the most racist moments in the history of the twentieth century, yet the reader is drawn to reflect on others, such as the apartheid regime in South Africa (and the context of cultural politics and boycotts there), up to our times and vivid discussions of politics of boycotts against racism and fascism in some of the above mentioned populist regimes. The arc of Lifar's work would appear differently if those would have been endorsed more rigorously in his time, and are we able to stop such collaborationist tendencies in our present time? It is clear it is not the author's intention to provide any overarching statement beyond this historical research, and the use of microhistory indeed works well for the goals of the book. And yet, in a time in which ‘the f word,’ fascism, encircles in our discourses more than ever, the publication of such a thorough investigation is missing possibilities in showing readers why studying history carefully matters.

This is an exceptionally rigorous work presenting multitude of arguments, sources and methodologies, which present some much-needed conclusions for open historiographical answers yet open new questions. Perhaps, we are facing urgent tasks that must be bound together. Just as the work of uncovering fascistic tendencies in our histories remains an urgent and vital task, so does the work for robustly theorizing and extracting methods of resistance and anti-fascism. Through careful and rigorous investigation, informed by our present times, we can ensure that the study of fascism, indeed, becomes exclusively the realm of historians, including dance historians, rather than an everyday task for contemporary commentators and all of us as democratic citizens who wish to resist fascism.