Coreography is not Destiny.
All dance is open, right? I think we can all agree that it's nearly impossible to hide the structure of dance from anyone who's watching. But have you considered what else in this world is open to viewing, bare for all to see? And, perhaps, the positive implications of that openness?
One of the unsung reasons why the World Wide Web grew so quickly was HTML -- an open language. Not only was it not controlled by any one company, but it also cannot be hidden -- everyone's web page is unhidden, the code used to build it is always there to look at, legal or not. It made it easy to learn from...but you had to be willing to learn. And it's rare that anyone learned anything of importance from copying web pages; I've seen many a friend try it, watched people over the last 10+ years work, time and again, to make a page look like Amazon, or EBay, or any number of big-name places. And they always fail at copying, but the rare, rare few succeed at making something new of their own devices.
Imagine that with regards to choreography -- more to the point, the occasional fear I hear from some dancers that they'll have their choreography stolen. The implication is that the thief is looking to make their place in the world off someone else's hard work. And it's true that, from a legal and even ethical sense, performing someone else choreography is taking bread from the mouth of babes. No one's getting rich off this dance, and you're stealing from people who need to make money so they can keep learning, and in turn teaching us. No one's going to learn if we're all having to work at McDonalds in between gigs, right?
Which is why, of course, you should just give away your choreography to anyone who'll attribute them to you.
...before you loose your shit, let me explain. My primary instructor for years was Zarifa, who started studying with Cassandra of MN way back when, soon after Cassandra moved from San Fran, leaving Jamila behind. Cassandra gave Zarifa leave to teach us her coreographies, and we did, especially when she's come back from one of Cassandra's dance camps. And one time, we learned one in time to perform it in front of Cassandra, or dance Grandmother. First time meeting her, first time taking class from her, and here we are with the gall to do one of her works. Ballsy, eh?
And then, we found out that Cassandra was going to do The Very Coreography We Were Doing. I don't recall panicking...but you know, one's memories are always suspect. What was not so suspect was that we had to bring our A game, or else we'd look even more like chumps. But we didn't. We didn't shine, but we kicked it pretty well, even if I did goof on a couple of segments. And Cassandra, as headliner, was after us...thank goodness.
And she went on...and went on to make us look like chumps -- although I'm more than certain that wasn't her point; she was just dancing. She shined throughout her choreography, adding little bits, personalizing it, all while dancing easy and smooth, like she was walking through a field of daises -- that "glide-like movement" that many of the best Egyptian dancers have, and which so many of us strive to emulate. It kicked our collected asses to the curb, and showed us how much farther we had to go in the field. No. Competition.
Anyone can steal a choreography...or a web site. But very, very few are Cassandras, or Amazon.coms. A choreography is not a dancer, no more than a website's HTML is a web designer. Even if someone stole 3-4 of your dances, it's their technical ability that still shines through in every move they make.
For someone who're trying to make their mark as a dancer, can you imaging the power, and the prestige, of having dancers throughout the country put your name as the designer of their dance in flyers, and announced before they perform? There's even easy-to-use licenses that can make that good and legal. Take one step beyond, then, put the written outline of the choreographies online, with a link to the video of you performing it on your website, or on Revver (where the ads can get you money). Now, imagine the traffic they'd get, and the offers to come teach in it person? Anyone can, in theory, learn a choreography from a video and a writeup. Yet the point of a seminar is to learn it right, and in depth, and consistently, and to learn as a dancer, not just as a mover of muscles; that's hard to learn from copying, as all-too-many dancers have shown. Your point is to encourage people to hire you to do that, and making a name for yourself as a talented choreographer is one way to do that.
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