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It's Not OK | An education on "For Educational Purposes" | 2 Worlds | Too Many Couples Dances?
Got a Life, Thanks | On New Dances Replacing Old Dances | Rikud Yahoogroup Guidelines
Several disturbing trends in society are coming together in our little corner of the world and it's very bad, bordering on explosive. At the rate and direction it's going, it's only a matter of time before things blow up, people get really hurt, and someone gets arrested or (as appropriate) deported.
The first contributing factor is the shortage of men at dancing, which leads to (in some locales) competition among the women to get partners. Not even great partners, just decent partners. (Let's be honest, guys: many of us do better socially at dancing than in the real world simply because of the numbers. We aren't all Brad Pitt, Albert Einstein, or Fred Astaire - we're just guys, and that alone punches our ticket.) So women are willing, on the one hand, to settle for less in a dance partner than they would in a generic social situation, and on the other hand, they put up with a lot of crap that they wouldn't in any other setting. Add to this the general decline of manners and society in general, and here's what we've got: guys are really pushing the limits (or flat out breaking them) of acceptable behaviour at dancing.
As a guy, I'm sure I hear only a small fraction of what goes on, but here's what I know from first-hand accounts: women date guys, get groped by guys, sleep with guys - the list goes on - just because those pathetic guys leverage their roles as "good dance partners" into whatever they can get away with. To the extent that they force themselves on women who, by rights, should be calling the police but don't because then there'll be even fewer men! How sad is that!
Rape is rape (not naming names, but we know it's happened) whether he can dance or not. There's a bigger world out there beyond the dance floor, and it's time we all recognized it. Men: act like gentlemen. Women: don't accept less. Even if you think - even if you know - "I can handle it", be aware that maybe the next woman, maybe a younger, or less empowered woman, can't.
The more we all allow this sort of thing to continue unchecked, the more it will happen and the worse it will get. Please do whatever you can to make our little corner of the world be a nice place. Treat people with respect, insist on being treated with respect.
An education on "For Educational Purposes"
Somewhere on most folkdance tapes and CDs you’ll find the words "For Educational Purposes". Sometimes the admonishment is further reinforced with the word "Only" tacked on the end. What does this mean to you, as the buyer? What does it mean to the seller? Perhaps not what you might think.
Under the Copyright Act of 1976, copyright owners have the exclusive rights to reproduce, prepare derivative works, distribute, perform, display, transfer ownership, rent or lend their creations. There are Fair Use exemptions to these rights to promote free speech, learning, scholarly research and open discussion. The Act allows for educators to use portions of copyrighted material 1) if the purpose and character of the use is educational in nature, 2) which have been previously published, 3) are not a substantial part of the entire work, and 4) if the marketability of the work is not impaired by such use. Whether folkdance workshops are primarily educational is debatable, but the material is almost always previously published (i.e. you can buy it in a store).
Ironically, the requirements by ACUM that dances use unedited music creates more rather than less of a copyright problem on the 3rd and 4th points. It obviously creates a situation where the entire work must be used. As for marketability, how much does the new work affect the marketability or sales of the original work, let’s look. When music is edited for dancing (and we know about the legal implications here), it is made different from the original and therefore while a dancer might want to buy the original recording for his/her own listening enjoyment, the original recording isn't usable for the dancer's dancing enjoyment: there are 2 separate (though related) markets. When the dance version of a song is identical to the original recording, a dancer could as easily buy the original recording for his/her dancing use. If ACUM agrees to waive these protections, that’s their business. But back to the Educational Use discussion.
The 4 points raised above are the generic Fair Use exemptions to copyright. There are also specific criteria which must be met for it to be considered exempt as an Educational use:
- The use must be for an accredited institution.
- The copying must be done at a time when it is unreasonable to get permission from the copyright owner.
- Only one copy is made for each student.
- No charge is made to the student except to recover only the cost of copying.
- The copying is done for only one course.
- The same item is not reproduced from term to term.
- No more than one work is copied from a single author.
- You may not put copies into collective works.
- If you have time to seek a publisher's reprint, or get permission, you must do so.
The typical sale of a CD (or cassette) at a workshop goes like this: the teachers have available for sale stacks of CDs (often still for sale at subsequent workshops) containing the music to the dances they’re teaching, a compilation of songs from a number of musical artists’ well circulated recordings which they’re using without attempting to properly license the works for resale, at a cost of greater than $2US (about what it costs to commercially make a CD). This scenario, always true in at least some aspects and usually true in all, violates every single one of the criteria necessary to be considered a legitimate Educational Usage exemption.
So what does it mean when you see the phrase "For Educational Purposes (Only)" on a folkdance item? Probably only that the maker of the item hasn’t read up on copyright law. Does it give him, her, or you any exemption from following the full requirements of copyright obligations? None at all. In fact the only value of the notice is perhaps when it is variously misspelled, when the humour value might somewhat offset the pain of the purchase.
People say that the world is divided into 2 groups: those who divide the world into 2 groups and those who don’t. In the world of Israeli folkdance (IFD) we have many such 2 group divisions: oldies (or "classics") vs modern, circle vs couple, big group vs small group, cut the dance to twice through vs play it to the end, do line dances vs don’t do line dances, and many more. Add your own. (And send them to me! Let’s see how big a list we can compile.)
There’s one such division that rarely gets talked about, least of all by the people who are most affected by that division – and for a good reason. But let’s back up a bit and see where it all came from.
When IFD started, dances were made by combining elements of the existing dances of the early Israelis’ home cultures and innovations specifically designed to create a new folk form. The music was played live, dancers danced for a sense of new community, of celebration, of lots of things. This spirit - on the part of the people making the dances, of those providing music and space for dancing to go on, and those dancing – we’ll call this the Community aspect of IFD. There were no professional choreographers, there were no workshops, there were no markidim. There was no commercial music business associated with it. Even as IFD gained in popularity, as music was recorded and the idea of a markid was fathomable, it was still done as a hobby (markidim had full-time "real" jobs) and as a Community. Everyone who contributed to it was doing so for the Community’s benefit, and so it went for many years, before the Dark Times.
I speak of course of the explosion of IFD into a huge popular success (a good thing), with social implications not originally found there (still a good thing), eventually becoming a huge industry of constant new dance creation, music sales, and pay-to-get-in harkadot (dance sessions) – all this comprising the new division: The IFD Community vs The IFD Business.
There, the cat’s out of the bag. All the people who go to harkadot, who go to workshops to dance and have a good time, they’re part of the Community. They are the community. All those who run harkadot, who run workshops, who choreograph dances, they’re part of the Business, and only sometimes part of the Community. Now, I’m not saying that every case Business is bad, but it’s very different from where we started, the Community, and in too many cases it hurts the Community. We have many people in the IFD Business who aren’t there for the benefit of the Community (you, the dancer) but of themselves and of their businesses. And this is bad for IFD. Always and absolutely.
We have people making dances to meet quotas so they have "material" to teach at their workshops, not because of an artistic or Community motivation. We have people who pander at their harkadot to Top 40 programming instead of keeping alive the continuity of the Community. We have people whose interest is for their own pocketbooks and egos and if you get to dance in the backwash; well, OK.
Not to say that all markidim or choreographers are like this – certainly not! There are still some who do it for the IFD Community (or at least more for the Community than for the Business). They should be recognized and lauded, because they provide the best of what IFD has to offer and the best of what the Community, any community, is. But sadly, in this day and age, you have to be wary of people’s motivations. Too many people hide behind the face of "the good of the Community" when what they’re really interested in is the Business – and more specifically, their own piece of the Business. People use this as an excuse for delivering sub-professional service (while still charging you professional rates, of course). "Hey, come on, lighten up – this is all fun and The Dance Community. But don’t forget to sign my check." See why they don’t like to talk about it?
It takes money, time, and effort to be a markid or teacher, more so to be a good one. In IFD as anywhere else, don’t begrudge someone fair compensation for goods or services s/he is providing. But make sure what you’re getting is what you pay for, what’s advertised is what you’re getting, and whom you’re getting it from is honest with you about it and about what "fair" means.
Let’s say that the IFD world is divided into 2 groups: those who’ll tell you about Community vs Business and those who won’t.
Note: this was written in response to a comment at a workshop that we were teaching too many couples dances, although the point is applicable beyond the workshop setting. It's been slightly expanded here.
While the issue of couples dances is and shall always be with us, people need to realize that Israeli folkdance is what it is, not what they want it to be. So much of what's in the corpus of IFD is in couples; period. To not teach these dances is to ignore the world. As for people who say "we don't do couples dances in my group so don't teach them", I'd ask what if we got a comment from someone who said "we don't do debkas in my group so don't teach them". Or "fast dances". Or "dances with a lot of turns" (we hear this a lot from seniors' groups.) Should we limit what's taught based on what some groups do or don't do? My other problem in limiting couples dances is this: OK, we don't teach any couples dances, you don't learn any couples dances. So what happens when the sky splits open and 10 people of the minority gender at your session (often this means men, but the scenario works the same when it's women), good dancers all, show up at your session wanting to dance with you? You can't! You're completely unprepared and you have to send them away. You don't know couples dances to dance with them, you can't teach them couples dances you don't know - you've succeeded in keeping couples dances out of your session. And you've kept yourself from ever dancing couples dances, at your own session or elsewhere, in perpetuity.
Here in the United States contra dancing is very popular. Unlike Israeli folkdance, where women typically outnumber men, at most contra dances the men are in the majority and the women are the scarce resource. And all the dances require a partner. Would anyone even think to suggest that contra dancing should be stopped, because not every guy can get a partner of the opposite gender? No, it's ludicrous. Everyone going to a contra knows that it's in partners, everyone know the gender ratio, and they all go and dance. Ditto for Israeli folkdance, and anyone dancing for more than a month who claims to be shocked, shocked! that this is allowed to continue unaddressed is either sadly naive and unrealistic, or has some other agenda.
Yes, I dance. A lot. I talk about it a lot, it takes a lot of my time and attention and money. Who's making what dances, who's teaching what dances, who's dancing with whom, when's the next dance camp, and so on into the night. Now would everyone who says "get a life" please understand this: I have a life. There are in fact moments during the day that I don't dance. I'm a Technology Systems Manager in my "day job", I watch an unbelievable amount of sports, I read, I hike, I bike, I surf the 'net, I eat. But my passion, my life, is dancing. What don't they get?
Some people spend their discretionary time collecting stamps (and going to stamp collectors' conventions, buying stamps, trading stamps, talking about stamps, reading the newsgroups about stamps and other stamp collectors). How different is that from what we do? Yet that's socially acceptable (even though, as they say, "philately will get you nowhere").
For others it's golf. I hear folks around my office talking at every chance they get about which courses they've played, which courses they're going to play, did you watch the tournament on TV this weekend? did you see that putt this one made? hear about that one's drinking again? They're "avid golf enthusiasts". Spend that much time and interest on folkdance, and you need to "get a life". Come on.
I think it's a great thing to have something you're passionate about, especially so when it's something social, cultural, good exercise, and fun. You can have your "Fore!", I'll take my 5, 6, 7, 8, and we'll all have a good time.
On New Dances Replacing Old Dances
I've heard from some markidim that they are slow to introduce new dances to their sessions. "For each new dance I bring in, one of the old ones has to go out. There's only so much time in a night," they'll say. Well, that's true if your goal is to play the same set of dances week after week. But if your vision is of a larger picture, there's no problem with having your dancers know 500 dances instead of 250 dances, understanding that in any case they won't dance more than 100 in a night.
I think of it this way: When someone tells you about a great new restaurant, do you avoid it because, "If I start going to eat there, then I'll have to stop eating at a restaurant I already go to."? No, you add it to your "repertoire" of places to eat and enjoy the larger selection. Same with dances.
For those people who don't have a Yahoogroups account, I've posted the Guidelines and Policies for Rikud document here.
If you need a pdf reader, get it here.
Comments? Tell me about it.