Abstract
This chapter considers how the work of Merce Cunningham (1919–2009) and Pina Bausch (1940–2009) is being preserved and ‘protected’ through online mechanisms. Blades then goes on to talk about how preservation questions are being addressed by living artists, focusing on how Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker’s authorial positioning during the ‘referencing’ of her choreography by pop star Beyoncé Knowles (2011) and the subsequent development of the online project Re:Rosas! The fABULEUS Rosas Remix Project (2013) demonstrates how the online circulation of dance poses important questions about what it might mean to preserve, author and own a work of dance art.
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Notes
- 1.
Judson Dance Theatre were a group of dance artists working in New York in the 1960s and 1970s who were instrumental in the development of Western contemporary dance, including artists such as Yvonne Rainer, Steve Paxton, Deborah Hay and Lucinda Childs, amongst many more.
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Sarah Whatley (2005) discusses this process in the work of UK choreographer Siobhan Davies.
- 3.
For example, Helen Thomas (1995) discusses the restaging of early modern dance pioneer Doris Humphrey’s work.
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See Climenhaga (ed.) (2012) for an extensive overview of the development of tanztheater.
- 5.
- 6.
In 2013 it was announced that Brown was to retire and that her company would commence a three-year tour, as well as establishing archival practices (Trisha Brown Company n.d.). Brown sadly died in March 2017.
- 7.
The idea of a dance ‘transmitter’ is explored in depth by Gardner (2014).
- 8.
Bench (2014) discusses this phenomenon in relation to Michal Jackson’s Thriller (1983).
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- 10.
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Blades, H. (2018). Preservation and Paradox: Choreographic Authorship in the Digital Sphere. In: Whatley, S., Cisneros, R., Sabiescu, A. (eds) Digital Echoes. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-73817-8_16
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