Abstract
In the first part of this chapter, I examine how Fuller’s failure to obtain copyright for her “Serpentine Dance” lay rooted in how her whiteness was offset by the class origins of burlesque theatre as well as legally enshrined doctrines concerning the primacy of narrative over simply “decorative” or “abstract” subject matter. In contrast, as the fourth chapter of this book shows, Balanchine had no problems with acquiring copyright protection partly because he was already so effectively integrated into the upper-crust elite of American ballet that his vision of the hyperwhite, anorectically thin ballerina became the iconic “natural” look of the ballerina in the United States. According to one commentator, Balanchine himself stated that the skin of a ballerina should be the same color as a “peeled apple.”1
Selections reprinted with permission from Caroline Joan S. Picart, “A Tango between Copyright and Critical Race Theory: Whiteness as Status Property in Balanchine’s Ballets, Fuller’s Serpentine Dance and Graham’s Modern Dances.” Cardozo Journal of Law and Gender 18, no. 3 (Spring 2012): 685–725.
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Notes
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© 2013 Caroline Joan S. Picart
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Picart, C.J.S. (2013). Loíe Fuller, “Goddess of Light” and Josephine Baker, “Black Venus”: Non-narrative Choreography as Mere “Spectacle”. In: Critical Race Theory and Copyright in American Dance. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137321978_3
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