Who owns Tecktonik?

"Tecktonik" is the popular term for a European club dance, "a mix of rave and breakdancing" (which seems to have a weird hair obsession--its trademark moves, "Le Brushing" and "Le Pot de Gel," are all about hairstyling, and many Tecktonik clubbers wear mullets).

The trend began, as the WSJ reports, when French party promoter Alexandre Barouzdin started hosting parties that he and his business partner called "Tecktonik Killer" (the idea being that the collision of different dance styles at the parties would be like the collision of tectonic plates). The article is a little vague, but it sounds like the clubbers at the parties developed the distinctive Tecktonik style without any prompting from Barouzdin. In 2002, when Barouzdin sensed that the dance was catching on in other clubs, he trademarked the Tecktonik name. But is the term "Tecktonik" ownable--or is it, like "disco," too big to brand?

I'm not sure. But I do think the dance itself (watch Jerome "Jey Jey" Boito perform it here) is strangely awesome.

[Best line in the WSJ article: In the days of disco, "owning the dance floor wasn't a question of intellectual property...but of physical prowess."]

TenduTV: What Moves You.

Interesting new development: high-quality dance videos will soon be available on demand through TenduTV. Kind of a lame name, but it could be a great archiving tool, and it does have some impressive credentials--Jay Franke from Lar Lubovitch Dance and Andrea Weber from Merce Cunningham are both on the board for the project. I'll have to check back on this in the summer, when it's tentatively set to launch.

Wayne McGregor's "Entity."

(From the Evening Standard via thisislondon.co.uk:)

"[Entity, a new piece by Wayne McGregor (pictured) for Random Dance] features...a list of 16 scientific advisers from around the world.

"'My fantasy at the beginning of this piece was to ask a cognitive scientist to tell me what was going on in my brain when I performed a complex dance movement. But that's way too ambitious. One of the scientists told me that he'd spent his lifetime trying to find out what happened in his brain when he lifted his little finger. So what's emerged, instead, is a three-year plan to translate as much information as we can get into algorithms, and then build a computer program that I can take into a studio with me.' The program - the Artificial Intelligence, or Entity - will be 'trained' to think like a choreographer, and McGregor will then set it a 'choreographic test.'

"'The thing is, it won't necessarily produce dance,' he says, confusingly. 'It might produce a piece of music, or architecture or some visual art. But it will be 'thinking' like a choreographer.' He smiles at my baffled face. 'We'll have to wait and see what happens, but I'm convinced that this is a more interesting approach than building, say, dancing robots.'"

(I love that this guy is also resident choreographer for The Royal Ballet, one of the most conservative ballet companies in the world. Brilliant.)

A small step in the right direction:

The Dance Notation Bureau has just been awarded a Save America’s Treasures grant by the National Endowment for the Arts to record and preserve (in labanotation) four of Martha Graham’s signature works: Appalachian Spring, Diversion of Angels (pictured), Lamentation and Primitive Mysteries.

How did NYCB do in London?

A good question--and a complicated one, despite the London press' near-unanimous answer: Not so well.

The last time NYCB visited London was in 1983, shortly after Balanchine's death. Vibrant and fresh (or, more literally, fast and different), NYCB's energetic dancers and Balanchine's brilliantly irreverent choreography shocked the Brits then--in a good way. They were blown out of the water.

This return visit is a case study in the evolution of a dance company. After 25 years without Mr. B and his definitive brand of artistic leadership, what, London critics wondered eagerly, was to be expected of NYCB?

Some of their disappointment is justifiable. I've seen each of the pieces on the London program of new works ("Four Voices," with choreography by Christopher Wheeldon, Peter Martins, Alexei Ratmansky and Mauro Bigonzetti) danced in New York. Their middling-to-barely-passable-ness shows the company's frustrating inability to find creative choreographic voices strong enough to hold their own against the older Balanchine/Robbins repertory. (Wheeldon is, I think, the exception here, but he's distracted from NYCB now by bigger and better things.) Dance companies can't survive as living museums, and NYCB is in danger of becoming one.

On the other hand: Some of the London critics seemed to dislike the new works simply because they DID expect a living museum--re-heated 1983, perhaps with better ballet technique. What's wrong with an attempt at growth, however half-assed? And often I found their criticisms of "messiness" in the corps de ballet unfair. London's own Royal Ballet offers a generally well-drilled corps that is also supremely boring. If there's one thing that can be said of the School of American Ballet-trained NYCB corps, it's that they've preserved that electric energy that so captivated London viewers the first time around. I'd sacrifice a few straight lines for dynamism any day.

The Royal Ballet actually performed while NYCB was visiting, so London audiences saw a little head-to-head action. I think NYTimes critic Alastair Macaulay--a definitive authority here, since he's familiar with both sides of the pond (and the argument)--sums up the difference between the Royal Ballet and NYCB perfectly: the Royal Ballet has a small group of fantastic star dancers, a lackluster corps, and a so-so repertory. The NYCB has very few stars, an exceptional corps, and a so-so repertory. I'd call that a tie. So, Londoners: why the hate?

Shameless self-promotion.

My old dance company just put the video of the piece I choreographed for their last show on YouTube. In the interest of choreographic preservation (well...that's one of my interests), I thought I'd post it here. (Note: the sound is just slightly behind the video, which is endlessly frustrating to me. Also, this is a recording from the alumni show, so it's a little...loud. Apologies.)

Move-me.com.

As far as I can gather, I discovered Move-me.com just a bit too late; it appears as if the project, involving a sort of dance photo-booth that appeared in various places around the UK, is finished. Which is sad, because it's kind of an amazing idea.

A description from the website:

"Move-me.com is a unique opportunity for anyone to experience being a performer working with some of the world's most exciting dance-makers and to have their work seen on the world wide web....The specially constructed move-me.com booth will be placed in various public spaces--theatre foyers, galleries, at universities or colleges--and is free for anyone to use. Inside the booth, the user selects their choice of choreographer [including Deborah Hay and Stephen Petronio!] and then, guided by instructions, creates a unique and instant dance that is captured on video within the confines of the booth. On leaving the booth, the user will pick up a printed time and dated ticket, with...an I.D. number allowing them to find their own video dance works [online]."

Perhaps the coolest thing about Move-me.com is that it's a vivid illustration of the difficulties associated with setting and re-setting a dance: Every "dancer" is given the same instructions by a choreographer, yet their performances are completely different. Is there a "correct" interpretation of the choreography? Well, no--which in this case is fun and charming and kind of the point. But if there needed to be a "correct" version--and most choreographers do need an official version of each of their works, for copyright purposes--whose would it be? The first person to try the dance? A randomly selected dancer? Some kind of amalgamation of various dancers' attempts? The choreographer performing his/her own work?