the answer is almost certainly "why should they?" If, as a creative, you give away all the techniques and tricks you sue to create your work then everybody would copy you, your work would be diluted and you end up with YouTube in the dance world, everybody doing the same thing.

Michelle,

I see it in a completely different manner.

BTW, are you making a distinction between dancers putting videos of their works online versus videos of their creative process on the Internet?

Would you apply the same logic to musicians and say that they should not make recordings of their music because it will then be too tempting for fellow musicians to replicate their phrasing and other characteristics of their music-playing?

I only vaguely understand the notion of "[giving] away all the techniques and tricks." In what specific way does this matter? Dancers within any given city can see each other dance and rehearse. They're always picking-up ideas from each other. The Internet just does this on bigger scale.

And if I did ever manage to develop my own personal style of movement, it would take a tremendous about of time and commitment over many years to create. I'd be delighted to see how other dancers worked with a similar approach and ideas to see what they did with it and what types of variations they created.

I know that some dancers and choreographers prefer to keep tight-control over their work because they don't want others to replicate it. But is this really a legitimate concern? From both a commercial and creative perspective, what's the real potential damage?

And how do you compare this potential downside with the incredible upside potential of the ease of replication and large-scale distribution of the Internet? Ideas can quickly proliferate on the Internet because of their attraction to millions of people. Shouldn't the potential of having a dancer's unique approach to movement instantly propagate through the digital universe be the real opportunity that should be cherished? Doesn't such huge recognition, open-up millions of doors for dancers?

A lot of people, I believe, think the way Michelle does, that if you tell people how you made your dances that everyone would just steal your ideas. I disagree however. Dance is the easiest of art forms to steal from, who does not know at least some of the movement from Michael Jackson's Thriller? You don't need to know the process to take movement from Thriller. The same applies for certain works and choreographers. "Revelations" by Alvin Ailey, the movement of Jiri Kylian, the wit and musicality of Mark Morris are all easy to do without any explanation. Obviously you could not steal the work outright costumes, lights, movement and call it your own because that would be wrong besides the process is very difficult and time consuming. It would be easier to just make up your own thing that was close to what someone else did, which happens all the time anyway. When you learn to choreograph you are influenced by the bias of your teachers and especially in a university setting where everything is codified and radical experimentation is rare. I think that dancers want the work to speak for itself. We are non-verbal creatures who are not taught to write about our personal processes as much as we are forced to talk about it, like when a grant is due. However, certain works are discussed in detail by writers but rare is the choreographer who writes and publishes their own process as Daniel Burkholder does. Are people really going to go out and steal his ideas or will people learn more about why he does what he does and gain a greater understanding of his process? In the age of blogging and video on the Internet we have the opportunity to lead the way. Everything has been done anyway, but how you speak to people with your work is the difference. I saw Jerome Bel's "The show must go On" a few years ago and he was getting critical acclaim for the same things I was doing with Liz Lerman 18 years ago but in his Jerome Bel way that was very different from Lerman's way. Our audiences watch reality television and sports where so much is revealed and when they come to a dance concert and watch abstract movement unexplained we feel like they should just get it because it is about how they see the work not about how we see it. More often than not, they just don't get it.

Borris,

Your thoughts about a lack of radical experimentation in university settings is interesting. Where does "radical experimentation" - this term may mean many things to many people - take place? And whose doing it? And how can it reach lager audiences via the web? And can the web be a more democratic medium where the work of more dance experimenters can reach wider audience? -- I obviously think it can.

In a Saturday Telegraph article, "Dance must be more daring," the views of Cuban ballet dancer Carlos Acosta are shared about the source and setting for where transcendent dance comes from:

Acosta believes that it is up to the great companies of the world - the Royal, Paris Opera Ballet, American Dance Theatre - to safeguard the future of dance by searching for what he describes as "works that transcend".

"It is not just new work that we need; it is work that has genius and resonance. It is up to the people who are in the positions of power to discover the new talents and bring them into a bigger scale and take risks. We need to be more daring, and OK, maybe we fail. Maybe it won't sell. But does everything we have to put on necessarily have to sell?"

Acosta's notions about the sources of innovation represents a very traditional, status-quo-oriented, power-dictates-all view of the world. Of course, the great ballet companies with extremely talented choreographers and dancers will periodically create unique masterpieces.

But real daring, inspiration and innovation in any and every field almost always comes from the outside. How far can an established ballet company really go outside certain boundaries? They simply can't because there are too many existing interests and stakeholders that have to be protected. And that's not a good prescription for not-net risk-taking.

Good suggestion... i will!

your talking about finished work, but asking questions about the creative process. a creative process is a very personal thing that not all are willing to share.

it may also be the case that the creative process is not at all interesting to watch.

if you can find William Forsythe's CD-rom about some of the improv techniques he uses most of it is just gibberish and akin to watching paint dry.

yes you can see dance and hear music when it's done but there are few willing to allow you into their process because by the nature of the very intrusion you are probably altering the process.

Hmmm, your conversation with Boris, especially regarding the Carlos Acosta quote, is really interesting, and is subject for further discussion I think. (BTW: Acosta did say American BALLET Theater, right!)

But getting back to the main point of this post, apart from the stealing issues Michelle brought up (which is another interesting discussion in itself), I have mixed feelings about this as a viewer. I know a lot of artists -- from filmmakers to visual artists to writers and choreographers -- like to have their work speak for itself, I think partly because, as Boris says, maybe they (all the aforementioned besides writers, that is) don't really know how to talk about their work since language is not their medium, but also because they think it might somehow dilute the work's impact -- they want the audience to get out of the work what the audience will without them having to explain everything. And I can kind of see why: sometimes I've seen something and thought oh how brilliant! That's obviously an astute examination of the gender / racial implications of yadda yadda yadda (I tend to see political stuff in everything). And then the artist will be asked to talk about the work and they'll be like, Uh, I dunno what I was doing, I was just, um, thinking about space and light and stuff ... or something inane-sounding to me, and then I'm all upset that I was "wrong" or I think the work not as interesting or profound as previously. But then on the other hand, with some choreographers, I get so much more out of the work if I hear them speak: half the stuff in "Three Atmospheric Studies" would have completely surpassed me if I hadn't gone to see William Forsythe give a pre-performance talk about it. But, then, if I saw it a few times, maybe I would have got everything on my own, who knows... I mean, I think a lot of art is kind of a dialog between the viewer and the artist, so their telling you what they're doing may disrupt that... I'll have to think more about it...

"It's pretty insane that an independent film has made $20,000 in one week showing itself for free online," marvels Crumley, who also sells DVDs and DRM-free downloads through the Four Eyed Monsters store.

http://www.wired.com/entertainment/theweb/news/2007/06/youtubefest

This is from a wired.com story. My point here is that the possibility exists for a different paradigm. The Internet allows for a different way to do things. Sure the process can be uninteresting and certainly many dance artist don't know how to talk about their work but those who figure out how to use this tool will make a difference in the way we look at dance. Perhaps not everyone will like it or appreciate it. Classical ballet is top dog in the dance world.

Radical experimentation is for me the notion of saying to a student "how can you use the tools around you to excite me or move me" instead of saying "use my tools" to make a dance. The idea of using myspace or facebook as inspiration instead of (composition 1 postcards) to me is radical experimentation. In this model the student drives the concept and the teacher learns and pushes the student to experiment and fail until they find something. I don't really know if that is radical or experimental but it is more in line with how students communicate.

I found the Wired article interesting because they engaged with their audience on a personal level and showed them the work and after seeing it people wanted to see it again and own it. I think the same can be true for dance. We can build audiences by communicating directly to audiences and telling them what we are thinking and having the conversation continue. If I said I am going to Boston how many people would show up? If I get 200 people to buy a ticket at $20 I will come and let them do the work of finding a theater and getting people in the door, that would be radical.

Any idea that creates audience ownership/participation or as some put it "buy in" like this is a concept worth considering. As you (Boris) were saying the other day, the old "subscription series" model no longer works for presenters... perhaps the audience should have more direct involvement?! Hmmmmm...also this would create a very direct critical feedback - no audience participation, no show, no false sense of mass appeal? Or would new and developing art lose it's chance to experiment due to lack of audience? ha! Where is the audience anyway?! Or, would the audience for new/experimental work grow w/ the idea? Wanna find out?

Matt Gough's comment on this post on his Tumblr blog.

You've obviously hit on an intriguing idea, Doug, as evidenced by the number of comments here. Matt said something on his blog that caught my eye about how artists can have a hard time putting their process into readable fashion, and perhaps that was what I was reacting against when I was disappointed with those choreographers after hearing them talk about their work (or, in the case of one company, reading what they said about it on their website) -- maybe they hadn't thought about how to talk about it to a lay audience, or maybe I was just on a different conceptual / linguistic wavelength or something... and the way I think of something in words is different from the way they do and I wasn't connecting with them. Anyway, it's a really interesting idea and I guess I would have to see it in practice before I come to a conclusion!

And also, thanks for citing to that Wired article, Boris -- it looks really interesting and I'm going to read it more in depth when I have time. This is a fun discussion, and I'm just re--thinking some of my thoughts... Michelle said something about this being a kind of intrusion into the dance-making process, and I guess I'm kind of saying I find it a kind of intrusion into my viewing process! Haha! But then again I'm one of those "weirdos" who goes to modern and post-modern dance performances in the first place and we are talking about attracting NEW audiences, so I'm now agreeing with you and Boris and Kelly -- let's try it and see where it goes!