After the shocking suspension of Ketinoa's account on Youtube due to the claiming of some very well known High Powers-(which has caused a tremendous reaction within the ballet community viewers)-now it is official. Paradiselost89, another GREAT resource for ballet clips, has also been suspended. The Powers that Be are very likely to have been involved in this action again. This situation is getting out of proportion. WHAT DO THIS PEOPLE WANT?!?!-(the Powers, I mean...) .

The Powers very likely involved are the ones that hold the reproduction and display rights to the visual material quoted. They are asserting their right to determine where and how their property is to be shown. It's a grey area of copyright law, but the owners are pretty well supported for claiming the right to have an unauthorized posting taken down. Some don't mind; they may feel that any use of their video is cheap advertising!

Yeah, yeah, I know...rights and claims and holdings and determinations and copyrights and laws and authorizations and yes, The Powers That Be...
Thank God I was able to repeatedly watch and enjoy Apollo, Theme and Variations and Waltz Academy in a time and place were such issues were largely and purposely ignored...

Is it known who are these "Powers that be"., are they the company making or releasing the DVD/Video the clips are taken from. It seems nowadays that on many of the recently released DVD's they have a code which prevents any use of the product other than playing it on a home DVD player.
You cannot even add it to your library on your Computers Media Player. Seems that the entertainment industry will go to great lengths to protect their copyright. This is very short sighted to me, as I often buy new DVD's I have seen previewed on
YouTube or the media.


Surely if the clips have been filmed by the people who subscribe to YouTube they cannot be touched. Unless of course it is the actual Company or dancers that have been filmed. In truth it is a breach of copyright to even film a live performance without permission.

My daughter always instills in me, only use clipps that are searched using the term Official. ( i.e. Official Aurelie Dupont Sleeping Beauty) Whether this is true or not I do not know.

Are there any official clips? All the clips of Dupont's Beauty that I've seen have been ripped from the DVD. I know they're promo videos from certain companies promoting different programs, but they tend to have very little actual dancing, IMO.

Some of the dancers have official accounts associated with their official websites (e.g. Dorothee Gilbert, Alessio Carbone), but I still wonder about the copyrights behind those videos. There was a clip of Gilbert dancing Tschai Pas and that video has been deleted -- although last I checked it was still on her website ;)

ummm, WALTZ ACADEMY?
was there a site that had some reconstruction of this work?
do you mean LA VALSE?
sad either way, but if the former were really posted on youtube or anywhere else that would be news...

[I do not know how correct this information was, except my Daughter is always warning me about using clips from YouTube on Facebook and other situations, such as establishing Playlist on the site. I cannot help wondering if she is being extra protective, and scare mongering. As most clips have been illegally used/podted without application to the copyright holder. (She is an Author and is quite keyed up with copyright) However when she put in the term "Official Aurelie Dupont video's. when discussing the subject with me. Only professionally recorded items came up. Not privately filmed ones. (Which can still be in breach of copyright if shot from the auditorium.)
She insists you can be prosecuted for using YouTube video's. But in that case why do they put links to share with other sites on their clips? Has anyone got further clearer information please?

There's no proof of the reasons why these channels were taken down, but it's obvious who is at the root of the reason why the Suzanne Farrell Ballet's performance are not available to watch in the Millennium Stage archive. I watched them live on my computer at the time, but when I went back today I found this next to the company's entries: "This performance is not available for viewing." This seems very shortsighted, especially among the wealth of other companies, groups and artists who allow their performance to be viewed in the archives.

I wonder if Dale is thinking of the recent performances on 19th and 20th September, 2009? I was in the theatre both times, so I would be glad to learn there was some accommodation for those who couldn't be, besides the projections within the Kennedy Center itself I heard about. (I'd like to know what the editing quality was like, too; sitting behind one of the cameras on the 19th, I could be pretty sure there weren't any "partials" -- shots of only a partial view of the performer's body -- being taken by that one.)

But the older archive video of the 23rd February 2007 program, running about 41 minutes, still plays.

Yes, Jack, I am talking about the recent September performances. I watched the performances on my computer. There were several different camera angles. I enjoyed it. At least one of them should be offered on the archive. I find it suspicious that neither is offered. But frankly, it's what I expected. I would have been pleasantly surprised if it was offered. As I was surprised that they offered the earlier program.

I want to add that while I love seeing the clips on YouTube, I can see both sides of the argument on that one. But the Kennedy Center specifically posts the videos. This isn't a case of a private recording posted on YouTube or a commercial video being posted without permission. Other artists seem to have no problem with the Kennedy Center posting their performances. They are meant to be posted.

Yes.

No

No...I meant "lost" Waltz Academy...

Seriously, rg...it could probably cause some damaging myocardial infarction to some of the Powers That Be members...
"Oh...how she dared to do that..?!?!"

Can someone tell us what the pieces are? I recognize the Stravinsky and the Mozart (and can thus locate them on the Farrell Ballet repertoire list), but can't figure out what the Shostakovitch-y music is (reconstructed on synthesizer, it sounds like).

That was a suite of dances (continually revised,cut, reinserted, etc) from Don Quixote. The music was by Nikolai Nabokov.

(on-topic) in the case of the Kennedy Center videos - do we know who decides whether the videos are to be broadcast once archived?

I'm confused. If the video removed from the Kennedy Center website was from Balachine's Don Quixote, was it the Trust that had it pulled? I thought Farrell still held the rights to that and hadn't given them to the Trust.

Nanarina, I believe all of the Aurélie Dupont clips you're referring to are technically not supposed to be on Youtube. They were taken from the DVD released by Opus Arte and have almost certainly been uploaded without the permission of the copyright holder.

Could Mr. Lopez be next?

Natasha, Lopez seems to have taken the lead now...let's see what happens next. (Vikharev's SB's reconstruction is up and growing fast in clips, FYI)

The video "not available" to the public was Suzanne Farrell Ballet's most recent Millennium Stage performance, from September 20 and 21.

Weird how different companies seem to have different policies regarding YT. The Balanchine Trust is obviously the strictest, but Paul Taylor and Twayla Tharp are also very strict about their works being on YT. On the other hand dancers within, say, the Mariinsky or Bolshoi often seem to supply house camera videos to prominent YT members, and I can only assume that they're doing so with the tacit consent of the management.

Not only do different people or groups have different ideas or goals, I think the governing laws are different in different countries -- Nanarina is in the UK, I believe, and the situation seems to be different again among the Continental countries. As an outsider, not knowing the laws or the thinking, I think I can see a dilemma facing a choreographer's trustees -- they want to maintain control so that the choreography makes its effect undiminished by corruption in performance quality, yet if they are extremely restrictive, the art has diminished effect because it is rarely seen or even unknown.

Although I haven't just now checked, I am pretty sure, though, that an American entity can apply for and receive copyright protection in other countries, if they are willing to go through whatever legal gymnastics they have to go through to get it. I should check, though, as my experience with this is limited to only one event.

And without knowing how correct or incorrect this is, the following page on Wikipedia is interesting. Best taken with a bottle of aspirin or the equivalent, as these things often are.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_law...sian_Federation

Jack writes:

Why couldnt one of tne of these entities (say, the Balanchine Trust) actually license the rights to post certain videos or do it themselves? That way they could maintain a kind of quality control, as well as supporting the Brand.

My personal concern in this matter is primarily with Balanchine. We are being deprived of historic -- and canonical -- performances. Without that, it will be difficult for people to examine closely just what made Balanchine's work so extraordinary.

P.S. Am I right in thinking that there is a a consensus on BT that the intensity (obsessiveness?) of the Balanchine Trust's effort to control (i.e., monopolize) the image has reached a point where it is becoming counterproductive, even of their own stated goals.

According to their own statements, their concern is that companies will use the videos to mount unauthorized stagings of the ballets -- a complete loss of quality control. I cannot see them changing their position on this. Keeping the performances or ballets from amateurs or casual viewers is, how you say?, collateral damage.

But surely such companies would have to advertise their illlicit performances. What they were doing would quickly become public knowledge in the relatively small and interconnected dance community. Wouldn't THAT be the point at which the Trust should step in?

As it is, several generations of dancers and ballet-lovers -- those living outside a relatively few major ballet centers -- are being deprived of all but a pathetically small (and quite unbalanced, in terms of quality and representativeness) video record of Balanchine performances. What is being lost in terms of future undestanding and apprecation of the Balanchine legacy is surely more significant than preventing a few companies from tying to mount bootleg Balanchine works.

Quite simply, I do not believe the Trust's stated reasons for doing what it is doing. ( Did I actually say that out loud? )

I'm with you, Bart. It seems a policy borne of paranoia and possessiveness, not any actual research or reasoning (i.e., a cost-benefit analysis).

Great letter by Paul Parish.

"But it is academic dance, and it's not just a pun to say there are principles of academic freedom involved. Is Ketinoa's channel protected under principles of academic freedom? Or rather, should it be? The dance world has languished so long without libraries, and the rise of video was just beginning to allow dance to be studied like literature, so you could study it and quote accurately, and the autodidact or amateur outside the academy was becoming almost as well informed as some professors. Though it was happening outside a university setting, the growth of serious dance culture was happening in the West rather like the scientific societies of the 18th century, when professional procedures had not yet been codified but people were making collections and study was becoming possible on an unprecedented scale -- and Ketinoa's channel was at the top of the heap for providing the core commentaries and syllabi."

So is my Daughter correct in what she is saying then please? I should not put them onto my YouTube (I am a member of the site) Playlists for my own private viewing? Gosh it does get confusing!! Thank you for the information.

Yes I am in the UK, and it does not seem to be such a high priority here the sense of Copyright, for example we do not have such stringent privacy regulations as they do in France. You only have to look at the content and numbers of "Gossip magazines". Going back to Ballet, the most protective element I would say with a British Choreographer would be late Sir Kenneth Mac Millan and the protector of his work is his wife Lady Debra.

Speaking for myself, the answer to your question as far as I am concerned is SIMPLY YES.

This whole situation is a sad loss for any person with a love or interest in Ballet.
YouTube is a very good vehicle to learn more about the varied repertoire from all over the world.
I have spent a great deal of time looking at Dancers past and present, reserarching lost and new productions. Where else could I find this at my fingertips on line and with such a comprehensive
collection. Of course I still wish to go to the live performances, and see different dancers,
But I will still purchase DVD's.CD's Books and Magazines.

There are several dozen excerpts and full Balanchine ballets published commercially on DVD, and a number more can be gleaned on commercial VHS tapes. In addition, it's pretty much a no-brainer for someone in a ballet company to track down a copy of someone's tape/DVD of "Live from Lincoln Center" or "Dance in America" performances of works for which there is not a commercial version. (Mozartiana, Vienna Waltzes, Liebeslieder excerpts, the complete Who Cares? for example). How could the Trust not know when Balanchine is performed without official permission in the age of the Internet? They have the legal means to stomp with big financial boots, and that assumes there is no leak from rehearsals from which they could shut down the production before it is performed.

If anything, having a YouTube performance by a company who had an official staging on the record would allow the audience to see whether an unofficial production had anything to do with the work.

Many people won't, though. If they can get it for nothing, even if the product is somewhat compromised, they will. I think eventually an arrangement will be reached where people will be able to pay a fee online to see performances and clips.

Could the "Classical TV" model -- linked by Lucy in our curren thread of William Forstythe -- be a model for this? Or something like it?
http://ballettalk.invisionzone.com/index.p...c=30449&hl=

If so, the scale would have to be much smaller -- and the product quite different -- from the more populist and spontaneous environment of YouTube.I'd imagine that the system for organizing permissions and royalties would get rather complicated.

Is there anyone out there who has studied Balanchine's life enough to feel relatively comfortable (come on, take a risk! ) speculating what Mr B himself might say about this issue if he were here today?

In my limited reading of his life, it strikes me that he did not feel possessive about his ballets, altho he would certainly have wanted them to be performed well.

I believe he tended to give away his ballets (even loaning costumes) to companies he thought would do them justice and which could use them to good advantage in developing their dancers and their repertory -- some of the same purposes he had, although I've also heard it said that he gave permission rather than selling it so he could withdraw it if he was disappointed with the results. Some of his oldest ballets, like Apollo, he could no longer control, his rights having expired, although if he saw a performance -- maybe in studio -- he'd be allowed to adjust it as a courtesy. (His influence was widely felt. Recall that when he fired Farrell and Mejia, they had a hard time finding any company to hire them, presumably so as not to incur his, um, disfavor.)

Nowadays I gather the Trust sells performance licenses to perform for a limited time, say, two years.

In a possibly related context, I think some inventors do not patent their inventions because they can lose those rights if they don't defend them when they're violated, and lone inventors lack the resources to fight a large corporation. Here we're talking about copyright, not quite the same thing, but it might explain why the Balanchine Trust is fairly aggressive about maintaining control -- maybe the law says if you let it slip, you can't get it back. But this attempt to reason by analogy goes nowhere toward explaining the differences among different organizations. (There's been a complete Robbins Afternoon of a Faun with Farrell and Mofid up on an Iranian culture site for some time, for example, and a nearly-complete Cunningham Pond Way has been up for a couple of years.)

As for stepping in when a bootleg performance becomes public knowledge, how are they going act? Lawsuits cost money and sometimes breed ill will, to say the least. Or are you thinking of the deterrent effect of that possibility? I think that may be part of their game plan already.

The Balanchine Trust doesn't even like George Balanchine's ballets to be broadcast in their entirety. Look at most of the last broadcasts of his work: 1993 Balanchine Celebration - only Scherzo a la Russe was complete. Same thing with the 2004 broadcast. And Bringing Balanchine Back - just snips. Even when the DVD of POB's Jewels was broadcast, there was a chunk of Emeralds removed. DVDs of Royal Ballet programs with his work had the piece removed when released. Yet they approved of La Scala's inexplicable release of Midsummer Night's Dream. That's what they want to be representative of that work? On the whole, I'm very, very grateful for The Trust, but I think they are a little blind with regard to promoting his work via video and emerging/current technology. And by promoting dance, I mean more than a little snip shot from the wings like we get from NYCB's YouTube offerings.

The fragmentary exposure you describe is distressing, Dale, but are you sure about attributing motivation to the Trust and not to, say, NYCB's AD or some other agent? I'm not saying you're wrong, I'm just curious. And it occurs to me that La Scala is in a country which seems to have more porous restrictions than we do here.

But I also recall, persuant to Sandy's question, that during Mr. B's time, if I heard correctly, SAB students who performed in Workshop could get tape of their performances, including of Balanchine, but not since his death.

By the way, bart, I'm going to pass being part of that consensus, for now! I just don't understand this situation well enough to take a position yet.

It's ironic because Mr. B was one of the few dancemakers of his generation (or before his generation) who did not have a knee-jerk disfavor of any filmed ballet. Isadora Duncan and Martha Graham were of course strict about not even allowing performance photographs. Moira Shearer caught Ninette di Valois's permanent contempt because she appeared in some films. But Mr. B was not like that -- he even re-touched many of his ballets to suit television better.

True enough, he did -- although at other moments he worried that people would think that the filmed version was the only true, correct one. The ideal answer to that for me would be to have several filmed versions of a given ballet, but he had to live with practical restraints, like cost.

Yes, as in music.

There's something in today's Links regarding the law on this:

http://www.artsjournal.com/foot/2009/10/mo...e-video_co.html

Thanks, Jack, for that Link -- and to Helene for posting it originally. Apollinaire Scher's summary of some of the legal aspects are the clearest, most succinct, I've read. Everyone following this thread -- and interested in the topic of copyright, should read it. I'll just quote the part that refers to the Balanchine Trust
This sets aside, of course, the larger question of how just how reasonable and fair current copyright law actually is. The exceptionally long life of copyright protection was never anticipated by those who first included it in British law and, later the U.S. constitution. Nor could they have imagined the lucrative and self-serving industry -- all those heirs, trusts, corporate entities, and law firms -- that has flourished around it.

For what it's worth, here is a link to the Dance Heritage Coalition's recent publication on Fair Use:

http://www.danceheritage.org/fairuse/

There are archival films at the New York Public library at Lincoln Center, but you need to be a researcher or choreographer to see them. The music industry (classical & opera) records many of their performances, yet Broadway and Ballet rarely do. The trusts and the repetiteurs would lose a important source of revenue.

MJ, you have put into words something that is usually left unspoken. Thanks. It's not the whole story -- not by a long stretch -- but I have the suspicion that it plays a role. (It usually does when institutions work very hard to preserve a monopoly.)

i've never had a problem looking at something at the library, and i'm not a researcher...

Well, yes, some money has to come from somewhere, if people are to do the good part -- maintaining performance standards -- doesn't it?

But the aggressive strictness of the Balanchine Trust, compared to some other holders of choreographer's rights, I guess, that rankles with us seems to be forced on them if they are to do that -- otherwise they will have abandoned their control, and, having once relinquished it, can't regain it, according to the law. What's not clear in my mind yet, if it ever will be, is the reason for the apparently different attitude and practice of the other holders. Or maybe they just lost their rights inadvertently, early on, or, worse, lacked the funds to defend them. There's not too much money around in this art from.

I'm not exactly trying to justify the BT or take sides at this point, I'm just trying to understand the situation -- sometimes something you don't like is easier to take if you understand why.

As for access to film and video at what used to be called the Dance Collection, my experience (which is pretty old by now) has been that some material was "open", available to anyone, and some was "closed", available only to those carrying written permission from the rights owners.

Do you mean Graduation Ball, choreography by David Lichene for Ballet Russes, music Johan Strauss, costumes by Benois, revived by The London Festival Ballet in the 1950/60's?? (now the English National Ballet.I do not know if it is still in their repertoire. It was very charming and amusing, about a girls academy visited by the young men from a military academy, and featured a naughty girl, comic master and mistress and the Drummer Boy , and Sylp[hide and the Scotsman diversissements.

I think it's still like that, but that's easy to ascertain before you get there. I'm pretty sure that the things that are not restricted still vastly outnumber the things that are.

No La Valse...No Graduation Ball...but the old Mr. B's "Waltz Academy"... -(I know..it's kind of hard to digest... )