Youtube's muting clips instead of taking them down.

[cubanmiamiboy]

"...Now we’ve added an additional choice. Instead of automatically removing the video from YouTube, we give users the option to modify the video by removing the music subject to the copyright claim and post the new version, and many of them are taking that option.”

So well, one can always hum the music, right...?

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/scienceandtechn...ight-rules.html

[Hans]

Well, if it's the choreography that violates the copyright, then it sounds as if the video would still have to be removed.

[Mel Johnson]

For Balanchine, Robbins, Tudor, and a number of others, yes. But Petipa is somewhat past caring.

[cubanmiamiboy]

The Fokine Trust too ...

[bart]

So well, one can always hum the music, right...?

You raise a very interesting question, Cristian.

There would seem to be a great deal of value in looking at dancers moving through space in silence.

Sometimes, with pieces I know fairly well -- most recently, with Sugar Plum Fairy pdd and Robbins' version of Afternoon of a Faun -- I'll turn the volume off and just look. It can be wonderful. Or am I just kidding myself?

[cubanmiamiboy]

So well, one can always hum the music, right...?

You raise a very interesting question, Cristian.

There would seem to be a great deal of value in looking at dancers moving through space in silence.

Sometimes, with pieces I know fairly well -- most recently, with Sugar Plum Fairy pdd and Robbins' version of Afternoon of a Faun -- I'll turn the volume off and just look. It can be wonderful. Or am I just kidding myself?

Bart, of course this is not a kidding matters. On recordings with dreadful orchestras I usually do that...Also, I'm used to it, because in the salon where I work, there's a computer with no speakers. Thousands of clips have been watched by me there in plain silence...

Also, remember that beautiful sequence of the silent playing in Polanski's "The Pianist"...?

[carbro]

A choreographer's and a dancer's response to the music is absolutely intrinsic to my enjoyment (or not) of a piece. Even in something as familiar as Ivanov's Sugar Plum Fairy adagio, hearing it in my head will not necessarily tell me as much as there is to know about a clip.

[Jack Reed]

I'll second that. I'm not much involved when watching technique displayed in a vacuum.

[sandik]

So well, one can always hum the music, right...?

You raise a very interesting question, Cristian.

There would seem to be a great deal of value in looking at dancers moving through space in silence.

Sometimes, with pieces I know fairly well -- most recently, with Sugar Plum Fairy pdd and Robbins' version of Afternoon of a Faun -- I'll turn the volume off and just look. It can be wonderful. Or am I just kidding myself?

It's a very different experience -- not really the same work at all. But I have spent considerable time, when I was teaching dance history, fast-forwarding through tapes to cue things up, and I realized that watching the ensemble sections of the big classics speeded up gave me a new insight on the traffic patterns of the work that I might not otherwise have had.

[bart]

A choreographer's and a dancer's response to the music is absolutely intrinsic to my enjoyment (or not) of a piece. Even in something as familiar as Ivanov's Sugar Plum Fairy adagio, hearing it in my head will not necessarily tell me as much as there is to know about a clip.

It's strange, but I don't actually try to hear the music in my mind. The movement itself is what is so beautiful. (It helps, of course, that the dancers were hear and responding to the music. )

Sandik, I will try the speeding up. I'd be grateful for your suggestons about a couple of ballets -- available on dvd -- with especially interesting "traffic patterns"? I can think of a few Balanchine works not really available commercially.

Story ballets -- or the narrative portions of same -- aren't very good for this. On the other hand, something abstract like the Act II Dream sequence in Don Q works very well.

The effect varies depending on the work. Pas de Quatre becomes a real hoot! Forsythe to silence draws you in much less than does the same Forsythe accmopnied by even the most minimalist music. And so on.