Brandjack News

By Quentin Langley

What do you do if you are a major global star with huge earnings and you find out that a substantial proportion of the choreography in your video was plagiarised from a much less famous choreographer?

It seems that if you are Beyoncé, you issue a new version of the video without the ‘borrowed’ choreography. Doing this might be considered a step in the right direction, especially if it is combined with acknowledging ‘influence’. But it does imply that Beyoncé is fully aware of the scale of the ‘influence’ – even if many of the original decisions were made by her team of choreographers. And, yet, we await both the apology and compensation.

I don’t know Anne Terese de Keersmaeker (and nor does my choreographer wife, Julia K Gleich of GleichDances.org). But my guess is that if Beyoncé had approached her in advance, she would have been delighted to see her art recycled in this way. The acknowledgement would probably have been more important to her than the money – though some recompense would also have been reasonable.

To this lay critic, the most persuasive of the several videos on Youtube that address this controversy is the one below which shows just how much of Beyoncé’s video was redacted following the global social media fire storm. There are also videos which show Beyoncé’s Countdown alongside the two de Keersmaeker films which influenced it. The parallels are striking, reflecting not just movement, but costume design, setting and camera angles.

Not only is some 40% of the film redacted, there are two sections of 25 seconds plus that have been removed. In musical composition, a guideline for copyright infringement and plagiarism is seven consecutive notes. Even three notes has been considered copyright infringement. In dance or video, 25 seconds is a very considerable segment. Though this will vary, seven notes would be likely to represent less than seven seconds.

The alternate video is plainly much less choreographically complex. Much of the remaining material and much of the alternate material focuses on close ups of Beyoncé’s face. She is a beautiful woman, but clearly this was not the original artistic intent.

Right now, Beyoncé needs a crisis communications plan. This starts with an apology. She needs to accept that her choreographic team – for whom she must accept full responsibility – stepped beyond the line of fair use. The size of the financial settlement – and there needs to be one, probably much larger than it would have been if the agreement had been reached in advance – is not exactly the point.

To salvage her reputation in the artistic community, and to be a positive role model to the young audiences where she has a cult following, Beyoncé needs to move beyond the issue of legal liability. De Keersmaeker has not brought a legal action. This has become a matter of an established global mega-star being gracious.

Every star depends of teams of people around them, and on numerous influences. The gracious star acknowledges this. It is time for Beyoncé to step forward and start behaving decently.