Throughout New Year’s Eve day, I watched the PBS coverage of celebrations around the world. After a few hours, any thoughts about Y2K disasters quickly dissipated and were replaced with a kind of elation. It seemed that I was watching the first truly global celebration in human history, and the primary element in most of the events was dance. New Year’s always causes me to reflect. So as I watched this global TV coverage, I began to think about how dance-making has changed in my lifetime. I also wondered how dance would survive in this new age defined by technology. How will we, as choreographers and dancers, confront the difficult questions surrounding issues of ownership and rights to our work?

In reality, most people’s exposure to dance still comes from television and film, not through a live performance. I thought about this whole question of ownership as I watched PBS’ New Year’s coverage. Who owns a dance once it has been filmed for television or video? Can the dance community find new sources of income by marketing their work as a visual commodity? Who will own the dances of the future? Will camera directors and technology experts who manipulate the human form through complex computer programs replace choreographers? As actual human-to-human interaction in real time dwindles, collaborations in cyber-space will explore new forms. Luddite that I am, I hope the very personal act of dancing and dance-making as we now know it will survive. Yet, in order to survive, dancers and dance-makers must explore new ways to value their work. This includes thinking about ways to protect our performance rights and copyrights.

When I began studying modern dance in the Seventies, the field was still heavily dominated by the influence of modern masters such as Martha Graham, Jose Limon, and Paul Taylor. These choreographers held domain over every aspect of their work. A change in this autocratic approach was partially initiated by Merce Cunningham and his efforts to evolve a choreographic style and process that eradicated content, storyline and the heavy stamp of a central creative ego. The Judson Dance Theatre took this process even further by working collectively, experimenting with form, and opening up the world of dance movement to include the simplest of "pedestrian gestures." Choreographer Lucinda Childs’ early work, which also used the movements of pedestrians who were unaware they had become "performers," defined a new form of collaboration. In terms of street-influenced dance, the Hip-Hop generation blew the whole question of ownership open in the Eighties with choreographic and musical styles that were home grown, borrowed, sampled, cut and pasted. Dances which looked like shopping lists of influences came to the fore.

So, if dancers are major players in the creation of the works of many contemporary choreographers, to whom does the dance belong?

In some sense, dance-making has always been a collaborative form. However, in the last few decades, it has become more openly democratic. Program credits for choreography now often read "Directed and conceived by," or "Choreographed in collaboration with the dancers." We don’t see many current dance company names that solely identify the artistic director, such as the "Paul Taylor Dance Company." It’s "Doug Varone and Dancers" or a more conceptual name such as "La La La, Human Steps."

Authorship could very easily come up as an issue in my work. As a choreographer, I focus on the creation of site-specific events that involve intensive interactions between professional artists and community members. These projects generally entail collaborations on a grand scale. They start with my own research into a given place and the people associated with it. The next step includes bringing in a collaborating composer whose creative vision for the work will play a large part in determining the form and content of the event. I continue to bring others into the process—dancers, musicians, technical directors, project managers, costume designers, neighborhood youth, local land owners, and a staff of collaborating arts presenting organizations. My role in this process is to maintain a clear vision of the project’s goals, while establishing a creative process that invites others to actively participate. The most recent example of such a project was Safe Harbor, a site-specific project co-produced by Dancing in the Streets and my company, Dance/Theatre/Etcetera, which explored the immigrant history of the Brooklyn waterfront community known as Red Hook. In a very real sense, this piece was made through the contribution of ideas and labor by many different people. One of the community members who performed in Safe Harbor was Sunny Balzano, the proprietor of the last longshoreman’s bar in Red Hook.

During the performance, the audience was lead to his bar where he emerged to describe the Red Hook of his youth. For months prior to the show, I would sit with Sunny during the day when his bar was closed and talk about his family, the area’s history, his life, his work as a painter or my vision for the production. These conversations informed much of the content of Safe Harbor. So who owns Safe Harbor? What does it mean to "own" a production when its content is derived from personal stories and family histories? It is more a question of performance rights than of money. It was my hope that once the project was completed and we were into performances everyone involved would feel a sense of ownership in the work. I do want the credit for the project’s conception and direction. I suppose those are the aspects of the work representing the "intellectual property" I claim, as opposed to any specific section of choreographed movement. Sunny "owns" his stories. The composer retains the rights to the music she wrote, though I asked in her contract that she cite commissioning credits when she performs the piece. The cast, the location, the weather, and the configuration of collaborating organizations which helped fund it are all part of the work. I can’t "sell" the work for reproduction. What I can and will most likely try to reproduce in other communities is the process I used to make this work and some aspect of the overall aesthetic of the piece. While the dancers did take a very active role in creating movement material, they were under contract and paid for their work.

In simpler terms, choreographers should reconsider asking dancers to dance for little or no pay. Instead, let’s become more creative about funding our work. Dancers have to change their attitudes as well. I know that as a young dancer I wanted to dance and perform more than anything. I often danced for no money. This altruistic devotion to the form is both our greatest asset and our nemesis. The spirit can remain, but let’s place a value on our time and expertise.

Martha Bowers heads her own Brooklyn-based dance company, Dance/Theatre/Etcetera.