Dance, Reconstruction, and Intellectual Property

Abstract

The objective is to initiate a investigation between dance, authorship, intellectual property, and choreography. For this, a look at what is meant by authoring in dance with the publication of Chorégraphie, ou l'art de décrire la danse par caracteres (1700) by Raoul-Auger Feuillet and the dispute with Pierre Beauchamp for the authorship of dance notation and recent discussions about copyright and choreography will be made; I will also discuss some cases of revival/reconstruction. It's not only understanding such procedures as “embodied textual practices” (Thomas 2004), from the perspective of dance notation, but also as embodied political and aesthetic options.