Copying and the commons

Copying is central to the circulation and transmission of danceFootnote ⁹ and is at the heart of many choreographic and compositional processes. Technique classes often involve students copying exercises and phrases from the teacher, and this practice is also used in creative contexts. For example, Marquez&Zangs, a UK-based choreographic duo who worked together between 2013 and 2018, described how they often copied things from YouTube and worked with other artists’ movement to choreograph their works. They expressed skepticism toward the notion of originality and suggested that they would view being copied as a sign of success.Footnote ¹⁰ At times, Marquez&Zangs copied explicitly, meaning that they used spoken or written text to make clear the origins of the movement. At other times, their sequences were made up from snippets of movement from videos that they found online, which were adapted and recontextualized. These fragments become part of new sequences. As these two approaches demonstrate, there are different forms of copying. As well as overt copying, many dancers and choreographers have been through training regimes that involve extensive copying, meaning that movements arising from various places can be seen to implicitly inform their practice and movement style. Furthermore, these different forms of copying might merge in practice, as there is slippage between explicitly referring to a movement idea and using it as stimuli for new movement and implicit influences.

The relationship between copying and creativity highlights a paradox at the heart of contemporary dance. Laurence Louppe suggests that contemporary dance prioritizes uniqueness and even depends ontologically upon originality.Footnote ¹¹ She argues that original intentions and codes, contents, and modes of actualization must be present for something to qualify as a work.Footnote ¹² Furthermore, Rudi Laermans points to the role of art works’ uniqueness and originality in how they are experienced and valued.Footnote ¹³ Yet, despite the imperative for originality, contemporary dance techniques are largely taught through copying. This tension is acknowledged by choreographer Susan Rethorst, who writes that many students find “the task of being ‘true to oneself’ a never ending battle, causing agonies about overinfluence, going too close to someone else’s work was as if too close to a flame,”Footnote ¹⁴ highlighting how contemporary dance depends simultaneously on copying, individualism, creativity, and newness. Students and artists must negotiate how to find their own artistic identity while also working with other people’s movement ideas. While this negotiation is undoubtedly present for artists working in other art forms, I suggest that dance’s particular mode of body-to-body circulation means that the tension between copying and creativity is more acute. For example, the interpretation of movement scores occurs in some areas of dance making and training, however, the lack of universal notation for dance means that the form does not have the same traditions of interpreting a text or notation as the other performing arts. Instead, dancers in many different dance genres are often taught to copy and “re-embody” or adapt movement within their own bodies.

While individual movements or short movement phrases might be copied and reproduced quite freely, dance works in the United Kingdom are automatically covered by copyright, providing they meet the criteria of being capable of being performed, original, and fixed.Footnote ¹⁵ However, although these legal structures exist to prevent artists from copying other people’s works too closely, copyright is rarely enforced. Writing in 2015, Sarah Whatley, Charlotte Waelde, Abbe Brown, and Shawn Harmon point out that, despite dance being recognized in UK copyright since 1911, there have only been three cases in which dance has been considered judicially.Footnote ¹⁶ Arguably, copying is so central to the way in which the form is taught and developed that movement is not often associated with proprietary value. While dance artists might earn money from making and performing dance, particular ways of moving and the principles that underpin the skills required to create movement commonly circulate between artists outside of the legal and financial structures.

In different ways, Ramsay Burt and Harmony Bench each use the concept of the commons to interrogate non-financial forms of exchange in dance.Footnote ¹⁷ The term “commons” was originally used to describe communal land and physical resources,Footnote ¹⁸ but it is increasingly also used to refer to knowledge and in the context of digital systems.Footnote ¹⁹ Drawing on work by Charlotte Hess and Elinor Ostrom,Footnote ²⁰ Ramsay Burt proposes that contemporary dance can be understood as a knowledge commons, suggesting that “many aspects of dance as an art form – such as dance techniques, theatrical devices, generic compositional structures or improvisational processes – are common-pool resources accessible to dance artists.”Footnote ²¹ Burt proposes that, when people contribute to a commons, “[t]hey do so for the common good and not for profit.”Footnote ²²

Burt’s larger argument is that some areas of contemporary dance practice are engaged in acts of ungoverning dance, meaning “giving it independence from its institutional constraints through aesthetic deconstruction.”Footnote ²³ His thesis centers on a specific area of European contemporary dance practice, demonstrated by the work of Xavier Le Roy, Jonathan Burrows, and Maria La Ribot as well as by a newer generation of artists whose work follows similar principles.Footnote ²⁴ He characterizes this work as having a “conceptually based approach,” suggesting that it “exists somewhere in-between the areas of dance and visual art.”Footnote ²⁵ Burt goes on to suggest that, through its aesthetic, this type of work “challenges and disrupts the way that the experience of beholding art has been turned into a consumer activity, part of a market.”Footnote ²⁶ His principle argument is that the work challenges normative expectations of dance that arise from institutional structures and is therefore engaged in a form of ungoverning, through which dance critiques and decouples itself from institutions and the “dance market.”Footnote ²⁷

For Burt, the contemporary dance commons operates on two levels: through the sharing of physical resources such as space and through the sharing of artistic practices, the latter being linked by Burt to the concept of the “knowledge commons.” Burt points out how the notion of the commons has been used by political philosophers in critiques of neoliberal politics and suggests that the commons provides an alternative way of thinking about how decisions can be made. He suggests that the controls that are applied through the market enclose or privatize artistic practices.Footnote ²⁸ Copyright can be understood as one such mechanism inasmuch as it recognizes intellectual property (in the form of works) as belonging to particular people or groups and provides a framework through which the monetization of this ownership is possible, suggesting a form of enclosure.Footnote ²⁹

Burt points out that the idea that resources are shared within the commons does not mean that people do not make money from their practices but, rather, suggests that the money that artists make through teaching, for example, supports their ability to keep working as artists rather than enabling them to make a profit.Footnote ³⁰ A similar point is made by Laermans in relation to independent artists in the Brussels contemporary dance community. He suggests that many contemporary dance artists sacrifice the potential of economic stability for the development of their artistic subjectivity.Footnote ³¹ We might suggest, therefore, that, although making money is a motivating factor for artists, it is not generally their primary motivation. However, this claim cannot be applied to all individuals working in contemporary dance. Furthermore, as Burt points out, commercial companies sometimes operate rather differently.Footnote ³²

The idea that artists are not motivated by profit seems central to Burt’s suggestion that the commons offers a useful way to think about the way in which dance practices are shared. The attitudes toward economic gain of some of the artists I interviewed resonated with Burt’s and Laermans’s observations, and I also found that some artists are motivated by factors such as connecting with audiences and peers as well as artistic and personal fulfillment. Therefore, while money might not be a primary motivation, besides needing to earn enough to support themselves, their motivations did not seem wholly focused on the pooling of resources or the development of artistic subjectivities but also partly on developing other forms of “symbolic capital.”Footnote ³³ Furthermore, some of the connections and networks gained through dance making may lead in turn to financial gain.Footnote ³⁴

Mark Franko, Bench, and James Leach have each written about dance’s circulation in relation to the anthropological concept of the “gift.”Footnote ³⁵ Referring to Jacques Derrida, Franko suggests that the gift’s contradiction is that “it must not call forth reciprocation”; however, he points out that Marcel Mauss foregrounds the idea that there is always an obligation to return the favor.Footnote ³⁶ Leach draws attention to the way in which gifts establish lasting relationships between people. Outlining the difference between gifts and commodity forms, he suggests:

Leach points out that performances are the conventional commodity form for dance. A person buys a ticket and attends a performance, and the transaction is over. However, he suggests that gifts, on the other hand, are given away in part to establish lasting relationships between the giver and receiver.Footnote ³⁸ He makes these observations in relation to dance makers’ efforts to communicate with their audiences through means other than performances to establish more personal and longer-term relationships.

Bench explores the relationship between the gift and the commons. In relation to dance’s circulation through digital media, she argues that “dance circulates in digital cultures as a gift but the content of this gift belongs to a common.”Footnote ³⁹ She draws a distinction between that which is offered as a gift and that which is “‘given’, that is what is broadly available because it is already held in common,” pointing out that there are constant negotiations about “who has authority to give, retain, collect, and/or profit from a corporeal common.”Footnote ⁴⁰

As well as establishing relations between people, the giving of a gift can be seen to further benefit the giver through the acquisition of status or prestige. In relation to contemporary performances, Tim Jeeves draws a connection between gift giving and Pierre Bourdieu’s notion of “symbolic capital.” Discussing the gains made by a gift giver, Jeeves writes: “As Bourdieu points out, recognition of these gains is typically taboo, but nevertheless, gift, typically presented as being outside the realm of capitalist gain, is seen to risk reintegration when the movements of symbolic capital are considered.”Footnote ⁴¹ This suggestion from Jeeves is helpful for highlighting the nuanced relationship between some contemporary dance artists and capitalist structures. While artists might “gift” practices and resources to the community, the motivations for “free” sharing are varied.

Offering works in progress, online recordings, and free workshops, for example, are ways for artists to raise their profile as well as fulfill artistic interests. There might be an expected return in the form of connection to others in the community, increased audiences, and future revenue opportunities. Therefore, while the gifting of dance does not directly accrue money, it can be in part motivated by forms of return that will raise both the profile and, indirectly, the income of artists, thus responding to the demands of capitalism.Footnote ⁴² Considering the anticipated return of the gift sheds some light on the motivations underpinning the sharing of dance and therefore raises questions about the potential of dance as a commons to challenge neoliberal capitalism by demonstrating how dance practices remain embedded within the logics of capitalism.Footnote ⁴³ Commons can be seen to provide spaces for the “free” sharing of space, resources, movements, and so forth that have the potential to be propertized through legal and economic structures. This propertization perhaps happens infrequently in some areas of contemporary dance due to the way in which communities negotiate exchange through four unwritten rules that are related to acknowledgment, adaptation, quantity, and community.Footnote ⁴⁴

Governing circulation

In her discussion of African American dance communities in the early twentieth century, Kraut examines “the codes and conventions that governed the practice of borrowing fellow performers’ moves”. She argues that “these protocols acted like an alternative system of intellectual property rights protection,”Footnote ⁴⁵ resonating with Bench’s reference to the “unstated social obligations that gifts entail.”Footnote ⁴⁶ Here, I wish to draw forth and name four implicit rules that govern the circulation of both works and practices within the areas of contemporary dance practice with which I am most familiar: acknowledgment, adaptation, quantity, and community. I suggest that these are commonly adhered to by artists and therefore act as a non-legal mechanism for supporting the fair sharing of movement.

The first rule is that the source of the movement should be acknowledged. Kraut describes dancer Johnny Hudgins’s motivations for securing copyright of his choreography, suggesting that attribution was more important to him than preventing the use of his routine and that “he sought the cultural capital of artistic credit, not the economic capital of royalties.”Footnote ⁴⁷ The prioritizing of attribution over controlling the circulation of dances is reflected in some areas of contemporary dance. For example, another choreographic duo, Igor x Moreno, who are based in the United Kingdom and Sardinia and have been making work since 2007, say that they are relaxed about the idea of aspects of their works being used by other choreographers as long as they are acknowledged. Equally, they described how they collate the names of artists and writers whose work inspires their own into an ongoing bibliography.Footnote ⁴⁸

A case that is well known in contemporary dance further highlights the importance of attribution. In 2011, pop star Beyoncé Knowles released a video to accompany her single Countdown. This video references a range of previous images, films, and dances, such as Flashdance (1983) and Funny Face (1957).Footnote ⁴⁹ Two of the works referenced, Rosas danst Rosas (1983) and Achterland (1990), were choreographed by Flemish contemporary choreographer Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker. In response, De Keersmaeker claimed that her work had been “plagiarized.” Claims of plagiarism in dance point to the role of attribution in the referencing and adaptation of dance. In her discussion of choreographic plagiarism, Miriam Giguere suggests: “Without repetition and elaboration, a field does not progress. The message is not that sampling or borrowing is wrong, only that the context of the borrowing must be considered and attribution given.”Footnote ⁵⁰

Acknowledgment might take the form of attribution, as is perhaps expected in cases where the copying of movement aims for replication. However, acknowledgment can also take the form of an expression of thanks or gratitude.Footnote ⁵¹ Discussing fans’ reproductions of music videos, Bench points to the importance of gratitude in response to the gift.Footnote ⁵² I use the term “acknowledgment” as a broader practice than attribution, which might include thanking others who have inspired, taught, or supported the development of a work, without attributing ownership to these people.

The second rule is adaptation. Kraut explains how dancers would often attend shows put on by their contemporaries to discover new moves that they then incorporated into their own routines but that it was expected that copying was accompanied by “improvements.”Footnote ⁵³ Kraut refers to dancer Ethel Waters’s articulation of a “code of ethics” that governed the circulation of steps in tap dance communities,Footnote ⁵⁴ which included not replicating steps exactly but developing modifications. When movement is translated from one body to another, some adaptation is inevitable, meaning that the concept of copying functions differently to other mediums. French choreographer Jêrome Bel goes as far as suggesting that “it is impossible to quote dance because you cannot reproduce it, which makes for the interest of theatre. Anything you see on a stage is a living action that cannot ever be reproduced.”Footnote ⁵⁵

Nevertheless, while dance’s form of reproducibility may always be inexact, the intention to copy exactly is different to the intention to adapt a movement or work, as can be seen in the distinction between a choreographer aiming to revive an existing work or rework it to create a new version.Footnote ⁵⁶ In contemporary dance, the adaptation that is involved in copying and re-embodying a movement is often described as making a movement “one’s own.”Footnote ⁵⁷ Laermans describes how when a movement phrase is transmitted from its original creator and adapted it is “de-authorized.”Footnote ⁵⁸ For a dancer or choreographer to assert their individual style allows them to maintain subjectivity and appears to be important when making claims for originality, ownership, and authorship.Footnote ⁵⁹

The third rule concerns the quantity of movement copied. Looking at the practices and opinions of some contemporary dance artists, it seems that taking small sections of movements or movement ideas from other places is accepted, whereas copying an entire work without permission would not be. However, what constitutes an acceptable quantity remains open to negotiation and interpretation. For example, Igor x Moreno suggested that they would not mind being “quoted” but that they would object to someone restaging a complete work without prior consent.Footnote ⁶⁰ Where the line is between a “quote” and a restaging is not clearly delineated, but it is something that is seemingly determined by the people involved in each case. This is demonstrated in Kriss Ravetto-Biagioli and Mario Biagioli-Ravetto’s discussion of Riff in this issue and in the way in which the contract between choreographer Matthias Sperling and the choreographers whose work he used stipulated that Sperling “would only select a 30-second extract from that work,”Footnote ⁶¹ thus making it clear that the work was being quoted rather than restaged.

The fourth and final rule is that there is an expectation that dances circulate primarily within their original community. The term “contemporary dance community” is frequently used in colloquial and scholarly contexts. While there is debate as to who this refers to, the nature of this community and the use of the term, the notion remains commonly in use.Footnote ⁶² In the context of dance, communities might coalesce around particular practices, geographical locations or, as ‘Funmi Adewole writes, “shared background, heritage, experience, or circumstances.”Footnote ⁶³ The Internet has extended and reconfigured dance communities by allowing artists to connect with a far greater number of people in different contexts.Footnote ⁶⁴ However, the circulation of dance online has not collapsed the notion of communities, and there is still an expectation that particular styles should circulate for the most part within their originating cultural, artistic, and/or economic contexts.Footnote ⁶⁵

As is evident with the Beyoncé/De Keersmaeker case, when movements enter new contexts, debates about the ethics of the transmission often occur.Footnote ⁶⁶ Bench suggests, “[a]s dances travel beyond the communities that provide them with context, questions of cultural theft and appropriation arise.”Footnote ⁶⁷ When movement is decontextualized, issues of power and privilege are foregrounded. Bench points out that, ever since Brenda Dixon Gottschild’s seminal work highlighted how ballet choreographer George Balanchine had drawn on African American cultural practices,Footnote ⁶⁸ “dance scholars have been grappling with the politics of how dance steps and movement aesthetics travel across boundaries of race, nation, and culture. Particularly vexing is that such sharing of movement inevitably occurs amid an imbalance of power.”Footnote ⁶⁹ I am not suggesting that, when dance’s circulation remains within the contemporary dance community, it is necessarily free from power imbalances. Rather, I want to stress that, as Bench’s work highlights, the relationship of dance to its community provides context and social norms.Footnote ⁷⁰

I suggest that these four rules, or “code of ethics,”Footnote ⁷¹ rather than economic exchange, at times underpin the circulation and reuse of contemporary dance, thus giving rise to forms of exchange that are free in financial terms but governed by particular expectations. This situation resonates with Luke McDonagh’s discussion of Irish traditional music in this issue and the way in which any conflicts between musicians at a local level are generally resolved via social norms as opposed to legal decisions.Footnote ⁷² Furthermore, writing in 1984, Barbara Singer proposed that some US-based choreographers had developed “self-imposed customary rules” and that these offered a superior means to copyright for “recognizing and protecting” their artistic rights.Footnote ⁷³ The question of how the rules that govern dance’s circulation develop and are learned is complex, and answering it is beyond the scope of this article; however, echoing Bench’s point about the role of socialization in understanding the obligations related to gifts,Footnote ⁷⁴ I suggest that, broadly speaking, these rules are learned and shaped by members of the community through their interactions with others and through the observation of behaviors in training, artistic, and social contexts.

Ontology and ownership

While practices can be codified and registered using trademarks or other similar licenses, only works are automatically protected by copyright in UK law (assuming they meet the conditions of being performable, original, and fixed through documentation or recording).Footnote ⁷⁵ As Whatley, Waelde, Brown and Harmon point out, “for copyright to exist there must be a ‘work.’”Footnote ⁷⁶ However, in some areas of contemporary dance, the slippage between works and practices is not always clear. Choreographers often share works in progress or other aspects of the creative process, and these sharings can take the form of performative events, blurring the distinction between process and performance.Footnote ⁷⁷ Furthermore, at times, it is only through such sharings that the work (albeit in an “unfinished” form) is manifest, with production stopped or stalled before the work is complete.Footnote ⁷⁸ Such examples demonstrate, to some extent, Burt’s suggestion about the commons and also point toward the uneasy fit of copyright law to some areas of contemporary dance.Footnote ⁷⁹ It is not straightforward to determine exactly when process becomes a work or when a work is “complete” and, therefore, fixable through recording.

The relationship between intellectual property law and the identity and ontology of dance works has been explored by Renee Conroy,Footnote ⁸⁰ Kraut,Footnote ⁸¹ Anna PakesFootnote ⁸² and Julie Van Camp,Footnote ⁸³ and I propose that examining dance work ontology can also shed light on the nuances of dance’s alternative ownership economy. While there is slippage between works and practices, they nevertheless often have slightly different forms of circulation. Generally speaking, the teaching of practices relies on the idea that the practice is then available for the students to adopt, adapt, and use in their own way. Dance works, on the other hand, are “sold” as artistic entities through performance, as Leach points out. They are therefore shared with an audience in a different way and are offered up for appreciation rather than with the goal of advancing and supporting other people’s practices. Furthermore, the appreciation of a work by an audience contributes to a choreographer’s standing within the field, meaning that the copying of the work or part of it might pose a challenge to a choreographer’s artistic identity in a different way to the replication of elements of practice shared through a workshop, for example.

Thinking about what kind of thing a dance work is helps to shed light on the way they circulate and their role within the “contemporary dance commons.” The ontology of dance works has been discussed by scholars such as Conroy, Bojana Cvejić, David Davies, Graham McFee, Aaron Meskin, Pakes, Frédéric Pouillaude, Sarah Rubidge, and Van Camp.Footnote ⁸⁴ Some, such as McFee, argue that dance works are abstract “types” that are repeatable entities that have enough essential characteristics to be re-performed, despite variations in their “tokens” or performances.Footnote ⁸⁵ Pakes elaborates a type/token framework, arguing that dance works can be understood as “repeatable patterns of action-types,”Footnote ⁸⁶ and Pouillaude suggests that publicity and durability are key features for dance works.Footnote ⁸⁷

Copying and adapting works happens in different ways. Different processes of restaging an existing work or developing a new version, which might be described as revival, reworking, reenactment, reconstruction, revision, and reinvention,Footnote ⁸⁸ are central to many areas of dance practice. A choreographer might make changes to their own works over time, revive a work by another choreographer, or use an existing work by someone else as stimuli for a new version. Reenactment has been given particular attention in contemporary dance practice and theory in recent years,Footnote ⁸⁹ and there are numerous examples we could draw on to demonstrate the way in which dance works appear to evolve through various forms of re-performance and remaking. My primary interest here is in works that are made in relation to existing works, not with the aim of reenacting or reviving the original but, rather, of making a new version.

Perhaps the most well-known example of a work that manifests through multiple different versions is The Rite of Spring, which was originally choreographed by Vaslav Nijinsky for the Ballets Russes to Igor Stravinsky’s musical score. The work premiered at Théatre des Champs-Elysées in Paris on 29 May 1913. The ballet depicted a pagan ritual during which a young woman dances herself to death. Allegedly, the audience was so shocked by the work that a riot broke out.Footnote ⁹⁰ After a brief tour, the work was unperformed for long enough to be considered “lost,”Footnote ⁹¹ a claim that raises ontological questions about what it would take for a dance to be lost and recuperated.Footnote ⁹² Despite its attribution as a “lost” work, The Rite of Spring has been remade on a scale that is arguably impossible to measure. Writing in 2017, dance scholar Lynn Garafola describes work done by herself and other scholars to track the number of dance versions of The Rite of Spring. She suggests that the latest precise figure was 181 versions, recorded in 2002 by Stephanie Jordan and Larraine Nicholas but that the centenary of the work in 2013 saw “countless new productions.”Footnote ⁹³ The numerous versions of this work each relate differently to Nijinsky’s ballet and Stravinsky’s score, and there is arguably no single feature of the movement structure, narrative, score, set, or costume that appears in every version.

The case of The Rite of Spring demonstrates how dance’s particular ontology and reliance on body-to-body transmission contributes to its open form of circulation. It seems that the work has become a catalyst for multiple new works and restagings due, in part, to the way in which the work was “lost” and therefore could not be identified with a particular structure of movement and, in part, to the fluid way that dance works circulate more generally. Millicent Hodson and Kenneth Archer’s reconstruction of the work in 1988, which claimed to be the original choreography,Footnote ⁹⁴ has come to associate a particular movement sequence with the work, but there are questions about whether this can legitimately be considered an instance of Nijinksy’s choreography.Footnote ⁹⁵

Dance and visual artist Florence Peake’s 2018 work RITE follows the convention of reinvention associated with The Rite of Spring. RITE has had multiple different manifestations. I saw a performance of the work by Katye Coe, Iris Chan, and Susanna Recchia at Palais de Tokyo in Paris in April 2018. As the audience arrive, the performers, dressed in overalls, are walking around and on top of a large mound of clay that has been left on the floor of the gallery. They appear to be preparing it with their feet. As the audience gathers, Coe walks to the back of the space and removes her overalls. Chan and Recchia follow, and all three of the performers start to cover themselves in clay. Coe and Chan build structures on each other’s faces, mirroring the shape of the bones. Recchia smooths clay over her body, perched on a mound toward the back of the space. Their work with the clay is methodical and focused. Once their bodies and faces are covered, the three women spray water over the clay. Moving in the wet clay, their movements become less controlled and their interactions less predictable. They slip and slide, run, fall and throw themselves into the clay. The energy builds and the movement becomes faster and more frantic. They throw wet clay into the air and on to the ground. There is no music, the sounds of the bodies moving among the clay create the soundscape.

As I watch, I look for movement references to other versions of The Rite of Spring but cannot identify any. Nevertheless, the structure of the piece; the removal of clothes, the wetting of the clay, the throwing, tracks a familiar energetic arch, building towards an energetic finale. The climax, however, is unexpected due to the sudden inclusion of Stravinsky’s famous score. For the first time, the performers move in unison, performing a vigorous set sequence, which echoes the drama of the music. They perform repeated reaching arm gestures, with their heads and arms reaching forcefully into the air. Despite the movement being different to the version that we might think of as closest to Nijinsky’s choreography (as staged by Millicent Hodson and Kenneth Archer in 1988), the energy and dynamics are reminiscent of the final scene, during which a young woman dances herself to death.

So, how does RITE relate to The Rite of Spring, and what kind of ontological framework can help us explain this relationship? As mentioned above, the type/token schema has been explored by philosophers examining dance ontology. Pakes considers this framework in relation to reenactment.Footnote ⁹⁶ Under this view, a type is an ideal, abstract entity with set properties that cannot change. Tokens, on the other hand, can differ from one another; however, they must meet some constraints in order to be considered a token of that particular type. Pakes explains that this schema “maintains that performances must obey certain minimal constraints, or adequately meet the identity conditions pertaining to that work, if they are to count as being of that dance.”Footnote ⁹⁷ Pakes proposes that identity conditions might include elements of a work’s movement material, spatial organization, motifs, the musical score, and the costumes.Footnote ⁹⁸

The frequent reinvention of The Rite of Spring highlights questions about the nature of a work’s identity. Philosophers have explored the nature of essential or “constitutive” and contingent properties in relation to the performing arts.Footnote ⁹⁹ As Pakes points out, the choreographic invention present in reenactment challenges the plausibility of the type-token schema.Footnote ¹⁰⁰ This challenge is further demonstrated by Peake’s work. For example, which properties of RITE might signify the “minimal constraints” necessary for us to recognize it as a version of The Rite of Spring? RITE features no recognizable movement references to The Rite of Spring, the music appears only in the last 10 minutes of the piece, and the title uses only a single word from the original. While the empirical properties that it shares with Hodson and Archer’s version of Nijinsky’s work are scarce, what does emerge in Peake’s work are some of the core themes of The Rite of Spring related to its context and significance. The themes of ritual and sacrifice are echoed in the raw, primal energy of the movement. Speaking in 2018, Peake draws a link between the famous story of the riot at the premiere of The Rite of Spring and the current political context in the United Kingdom and Europe, referring to the fracturing of Europe and the rise of fascism that was taking place at the time of Nijinsky’s premiere.Footnote ¹⁰¹ She describes using the “primal body, the visceral body and the instinctive body” as “a force against fascism,” thus implying that contextual, rather than empirical, characteristics of RITE are what relate it to Nijinsky’s work.Footnote ¹⁰²

We might conclude, therefore, that RITE is not an instance of The Rite of Spring and that Peake has created a new work altogether, which draws on a small quantity of features from The Rite of Spring. It seems this would be the outcome of adopting Pakes’s view.Footnote ¹⁰³ Furthermore, following Pouillaude’s distinction between a version, which is attributed to the original choreographer, and a reinterpretation, which is “signed by a choreographic author and establishes a new work in its own right,”Footnote ¹⁰⁴ would also suggest that RITE is not a version of The Rite of Spring. However, the implication of this conclusion is that there are multiple works called The Rite of Spring, or variations on that title, that do not necessarily share anything other than an interest in a particular work and reference to that work’s title. This is a plausible outcome, but, in my view, it does not seem to quite reflect community practices around The Rite of Spring, which appear to recognize its multiple versions as more closely related to one another and, arguably, as different instances of the same thing.Footnote ¹⁰⁵

Garafola suggests that The Rite of Spring’s status as a “lost” work means that it “comprises a body of ideas rather than a detailed choreographic script and that this conceptual freedom allows for both the ballet’s continual reinvention and for the persistence of ideas associated with the original.”Footnote ¹⁰⁶ She goes on to suggest that the work’s “transgressiveness,” underscored by the riot that allegedly took place at the premier, contributes to one set of ideas about the work, therefore, demonstrating how RITE responds to features of The Rite of Spring without replicating particular movements.Footnote ¹⁰⁷ This suggestion implies that dance works, or at least some dance works, might be identifiable through the adoption and adaptation of particular ideas or themes rather than through the replication of a set of fixed empirical properties.Footnote ¹⁰⁸ The implication is that each aspect of the original is open to interpretation and modification, so thinking of a work as having a set of empirical features does not seem to be able to account for the way in which they are copied, adapted, and reworked.Footnote ¹⁰⁹ Pointing to the flexibility of interpretation inherent to the performance of dance works, due to its lack of universal notation and reliance on oral transmission, Pouillaude argues that “[w]e therefore have to understand the choreographic work not as a clear and distinct set of prescriptions but more as a framework for variation that fixes some features of identity and some limits.Footnote ¹¹⁰ This fixing of identity features is not achieved through a single ideal performance or via writing. Crucially, this flexibility in terms of how performances and versions appear demonstrates how fixing the work through the documentation of a single performance will not adequately capture it, pointing to the problem with the fixation requirement for copyright.

Reflecting on these ontological issues leads me to my key point. Open-ness as a proprietary stance within the contemporary dance community is linked to the nature of dance work ontology. More specifically, thinking about dance works as possessing essential empirical features does not allow us to fully grasp how it is that works circulate in this context. This is where ontology and ownership intersect. Examining dance work ontology points to some of the reasons why copyright, with its focus on a stable, finished, and fixed work, does not seem to resonate with many contemporary dance practitioners. Dance works are often fluid and adaptable. This feature of their ontology is something that artists must decide how to negotiate, and I am not suggesting that all artists necessarily readily accept works or movement being reproduced. However, with copyright not easily aligning with dance work ontology, not to mention the complications of making a legal claim, open attitudes toward the circulation of dance are common. The rules that I have outlined previously arguably function as an alternative to legal structures as a result of the nature of dance works and, I propose, set the “limits” on work identity referred to by Pouillaude.

The fairly loose conditions for work identity that I have advocated raise questions about how we recognize a performance of a particular work as opposed to another work or something else altogether. I suggest that the four rules I outlined previously inform the qualitative recognition of dance works, meaning that the legitimacy and accepted ownership of a work – in particular, in cases where a work is reenacted, revised, or reworked – is constrained by the community and an implicit understanding of acceptable practices rather than by copyright and a fixed version of the work.Footnote ¹¹¹ I am not suggesting that each individual audience member’s reading of the work wholly determines its identity; rather, that the underlying codes of the community inform the way in which works and performances are understood in relation to one another and therefore shape how both ownership and ontology are recognized. For example, acknowledgment is important for identifying a performance as a version of a particular work. New versions of a work frequently use the same title as the original work or a modification of it and will usually refer to the choreographer. If a performance includes enough properties of a work to be recognizably derivative, but the choreographer is not acknowledged, the work might be considered plagiarized, and audiences familiar with the original are likely to view the performance as something other than a legitimate version of the work. This idea also points to the role of the community as practices are constrained by the habits and expectations of those working within the context within which it is made as well as the instincts and judgments of those working out whether or not a performance is truly an instance or version of an existing work and therefore how to understand ownership.Footnote ¹¹² The process of locating the work in relation to others and recognizing the connections, similarities, and derivations of movement, styles, ideas, and images not only shapes how audiences think about ownership but also foregrounds the ontological nature of dance works as comprising a wide range of features, arguably none of which are individually essential to a new version of the same work. This interplay further demonstrates how it is that ownership, the practices of the contemporary dance commons, and dance ontology intersect.

Adaptation and the quantity of movement used are also central to identifying a performance as a version of a particular work, especially when it involves reworking. Some adaptation is unavoidable; even in cases where someone is aiming to restage a work in exactly the same way as a previous performance, each dancer will adapt and interpret the movement differently to the previous person who performed it. However, how readily we identify a performance as an instance of an existing work depends on our previous knowledge of that work and the way in which adaptation has been used. As already discussed, the quantity of properties adopted and extent of the adaptation work together to locate the work either as a version of a previous work or as a different work altogether. In order to be recognized as a version of an existing work, the adaptation should maintain the presence of sufficient properties to be recognizable, but this does not mean any individual properties can be considered essential, and the precise quantity and exactly what these properties are remains open and is determined by the community.

Burt’s argument about what is shared within the commons focuses primarily on the pooling of knowledge via resources and practices rather than the sharing of dance works. However, he does discuss reworking, foregrounding the way in which works become part of memory and proposing that “[h]istories and memories of theatre dance are, in effect and by default, a shared resource, a knowledge commons and not something that can be bought or sold as private or commercial property.”Footnote ¹¹³ Their immaterial nature means that works circulate in part through these memories, as exemplified by reworkings. Burt points out that reworking can lead to legal issues, but he suggests that such instances are indicative of different, more hierarchical structures to those that operate in the communities he discusses.Footnote ¹¹⁴ RITE and its relationship to The Rite of Spring further exemplify the proposition that works circulate through memories and highlights the complexity that this poses for ownership. While, in the United Kingdom, works are legally owned, some seem to become part of the “contemporary dance commons.” While the ownership of different versions might be attributed to the choreographer who made them, to pin down the ownership of a work like The Rite of Spring does not seem to fit. The dance work as a “body of ideas”Footnote ¹¹⁵ is available for anyone to rework, and if the four rules of acknowledgment, quantity, adaptation, and community are adhered to, these versions are likely going to be accepted as legitimate versions of The Rite of Spring.