[Callers] Choreography and Copyright

[Martha Wild via Callers]

Call a dance written by someone else:
Pretty much always, is my guess. If I note down a dance at a festival and I like it, I call it, and try to get all attributions for announcement. Maybe if there was a caller who stipulate that no one was to call their dances without express permission or proof they’d bought the book - but I don’t know of a caller doing that.

Publish a dance written by someone else:
If the dance is on the author's open website, or I know the caller personally and know they are happy to have their dances spread throughout the community, then fine. If a dance is in a book that one has to buy, then never - might mention the name and author, and maybe the book, but I wouldn’t give out the dance details. Don’t know? Don’t publish it.

Modify, borrow from, a dance written by someone else?
Always! If it’s a small change and I’m calling it I just give the author credit and say it’s a slight variant (forward and back instead of circle left for example). Using an interesting figure and sticking it in a new context substantially different from the original - no problem, but I might credit the original on a website for example - “inspired by Title, by So-and-So”.

Very different from English Country, by the way. If someone has written a dance there, and you realize that a turn single left would be so much more intuitive and flow better than a turn single right, heaven forfend that you should suggest changing the author’s original intention! Even if maybe it was an oversight originally! Liberty is NOT to be taken, at least with modern dances - though it’s a little grayer with traditional dances that various people interpret differently because the original directions are sometimes obscure.

As for me - as a dance choreographer - please feel free to spread my dances - they are on my website, and I wrote them to go out into the world and be fruitful and multiply and all that.

Martha

> On Jan 22, 2016, at 4:03 PM, Jeremy Child via Callers <callers at lists.sharedweight.net> wrote:
> 
> The folk community is generally very open on sharing ideas and choreography.  I suspect few of us would think twice about calling a dance that we found when someone else called it at an event.  As for publishing it on the internet, we'd probably be more reticent, especially if the author has not published it, or has done so in booklets that are sold.
> 
> This is generally the opposite of what happens in other dance communities, where the creation is jealously guarded.  This made me wonder whether we are too lax in assuming that a choreographer is happy for us to make full use of their work.  So my question on the subject of copyright of choreography is:
> 
> Under what circumstances do we have the moral and/or legal right to:
> 1) Call a dance written by someone else?
> 2) Publish a dance written by someone else?
> 3) Modify, or borrow from, a dance written by someone else?
> 
> Jeremy
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