Lacottes' Pharaoh's Daughter: Copyrighted?

[Kyone]

I'd like to enter NFAA's youngARTS program in the ballet category, which involves recording a solo. (Participants are responsible for obtaining all necessary releases for choreography as well as music, if applicable.) I don't want to do something obvious and overdone like Kitri or Aurora, but it would be nice not to choreograph something, so I looked around youtube and saw Zakharova performing Aspicia's variation from Pharaoh's Daughter... http://youtube.com/watch?v=u8fXVOdE08Y I really like it, but I have no idea about the copyright issues. I'm thinking the variation was most likely choreographed by Pierre Lacotte. Would I need a release to dance it?

[Mel Johnson]

As we were discussing earlier today on the thread on ABT's Le Corsaire, intellectual property rights are more and more an issue of contention. If you copy a variation from a video, then ethically, "the horse is on you". If you learn it from a stager, then they're responsible for any violation of international copyright. I think that you will find, on any video of a production made for the commercial market that there's a credit that rolls at the end saying, ©XYZ Ballet All Rights Reserved. Whether the copyright holder would actually come after a student is up to them, but some holders can be extremely edgy. I wouldn't do it. In a case like this, there would be multiple rights involved, and getting them would probably be more trouble and expense than the product is worth. Not getting clearance could result in your being disqualified from the competition if you couldn't produce the appropriate documents.

[Kyone]

Thank you! And I suppose the same applies if I want to use music written within the past couple decades? That's a bummer.

Edited July 14, 2008 by Kyone

[Mel Johnson]

Oh yes.

 

And not just the last couple of decades, either. Revisions in international copyright law have made it so that music composed after 1926 is still subject to copyright, and even stuff from before then was made subject to renewal of copyright, so Irving Berlin's World War I stuff is still under copyright to Irving Berlin, Inc., even though Irving himself shuffled off awhile ago.

[Victoria Leigh]

Jerry, I'm so sorry, as I know you are brand new here, but no one can post on the YD forums, even these very old topics, except Young Dancers and the Teacher Moderators. (Mr. Johnson was a Teacher Moderator at the time this topic was active.)