With the YouTube nation we all live in these days you can literally spend days and days looking at people’s choreography from around the world. It’s very common for teachers and choreographers to film their classes and put them online for the world to see and comment on. While it’s great to be able to promote your work through videos in an online environment occasionally your work that you created for the classroom can end up on commercial television across the other side of the world.
Most recently it was bought to our attention that Sydney based choreographer and performer Manuela Oliveira was made aware of her choreography been ripped off for a commercial television show in Asia.
See both videos below. Look at the beginning floor work choreography in each video.
Manuela Oliveira
Asia Television Show
So what can we do about this?? This is not the first time this has happened and I’m sure it won’t be the last. Why do people think that the concept of pay for what you use doesn’t apply to choreography… This is very hard to police but something certainly needs to change.