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Youtube seems to have so many fans, but I find the experience of watching snippets to be very unfulfilling. I am grateful for what it provides, but dissatisfied with the quality, insufficient indexing, and limited scope of clips on youtube. I think an online library of performed ballets, lectures, workshops, and classes would improve attendance.

Without addressing the larger scope of your suggestions, which have real merit, I will say that I have enjoyed numerous hours watching clips under "Vaganova Ballet Academy" in all the different years of study, as well as clips under "Paris Opera Ballet School," as they take you behind the scenes to institutions where you could never go on your own. To see the children develop over the years is truly inspiring IMHO. Although in the Vaganova clips it has been suggested that because (1) the teacher isn't seen at all and the students just know what to do, and also (2) the girls look absolutely terrified, that these may be their final examinations of the year. I'd be happy if I could dance like the worst of them!

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This is actually a very contentious issue, in the most notable cases such as Balanchine the choreography is actually part of a licensed trademark and copyrighted and belongs to the Balanchine trust and foundation, they release DVDs or excerpts to promote the work but the revenue collected from the work goes to further the work and cause of NYCB, the Balanchine Trust and Foundation. There's much on the internet but technically the work of Ashton, Macmillan and every modern choreographer who has set up or has a foundation set up to protect the rights and reproduction of their art and the format of their choreography are completely within their right to ensure that illegal reproduction and distribution of their work doesn't take place. Only the Balanchine trust is absolutely ruthless in ensuring unauthorised reproduction of the work, and while I can see the argument that putting videos into the public domain on sharing sites does potentially bring ballet to a wider audience (and I say potentially as no one without an interest in ballet is likely to look at these videos) the fact remains that authorised DVDs do give revenue directly to the performers, the choreographers company, the choreographers foundation. Indeed why should it be uncool to share films, music etc via illegal sharing sites yet ballet is fine?

Can there be no middle ground between the total prohibition of online access to certain works and performances by heavy-handed foundations and screwing choreographers and performers out of revenue they've rightfully earned?

As a ballet neophyte, I find that all primers on classical dance point to Balanchine as one of the pillars of the art form in the 20th century. I'd like to see some samples of his work but the Balanchine trust won't let me.

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As a ballet neophyte, I find that all primers on classical dance point to Balanchine as one of the pillars of the art form in the 20th century. I'd like to see some samples of his work but the Balanchine trust won't let me.

You can find short (very short) clips on New York City Ballet's site. Here's the latest, excerpts of and remarks on Jewels.

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I think the best presentations of Balanchine's ballets to be seen today are the films and videos of the performances he supervised, but they are, as you say, Tapfan, difficult to get to see. Besides things like the NYCB video kfw linked to, there are some short preview clips of his ballets on Miami City Ballet's YouTube channel worth a glance, but more satisfying to watch than these, here's the Suzanne Farrell Ballet's program of a few years ago. (You may notice that all four of these sources - the recordings of performances Balanchine supervised, seldom on the Internet, but which do sometimes turn up somewhere; clips from the New York City Ballet of today; MCB; and TSFB, differ at least a little in the way the ballets are danced.)

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