How I feel about University of Phoenix is how I feel about something I just watched on YouTube. Here it is... someone teaching dance choreography for Ciara's "1, 2 Step" music video:
Now, my initial concern with this video is the fact that the person teaching the choreography and breaking it down step-by-step and putting it online is NOT the choreographer. Despite my research efforts, I've been unable to identify the actual choreographer- as I would love to know what he/she has to say about their work being put up on YouTube and having someone else reap the benefits without acknowledging the choreographer's work.
Getting beyond that point, how effective is this so called "teaching" of choreography? And is it good or bad for the dance industry?
For one thing, it's free... that's great for expanding the amount of people who even have access to dance education. Also, people can learn this at their own pace and practice it and from it even create their own style or explore more with dance as an art form. On the other hand, this is stealing. And it's taking dance education to a level of simple memorization and regurgitation of steps, as if that's enough. The teacher/student interaction is just as important in dance as other kinds of education, if not more important, because the content matter is physical movement.
Another issue this brings up, copyrights. So, from further research I learn that Corey Vidal, the guy in this video, is actually a YouTube partner who is PAID to show these videos because he is creating original content. Here is Corey's official website. He gets PAID when someone watches his video because there are advertisements running along side of it. *** AHEM... Does the actual choreographer get ANY of this revenue?!?!!? I think not!!!*** How is this liable? How is it not illegal? Anyways... not sure.
On a related note, there is a different site that I heard about from the choreographer I assist, Christina Woodard, who is involved with a project that puts Across the Floor progressions, as well as center combinations, and even choreography for competition routines online for a fee that people can buy so that studios can essentially outsource the creative content they teach to their kids.
This is an interesting concept... I'm not so sure how it will work, as I see part of the reasoning for spending a lot of money on hiring an outside choreographer is because they are "famous" or "known" in the dance world and the kids get really, super duper excited having their favorite choreographer actually team them at their home studio. Regardless, here is a the website, along with a screen shot- the site is called OnlineDanceAcademy.com.
Anyways, that's all for now folks. :-) Go check those sites out on your own and comment back on what you think the effect of this online dance teaching/education/choreography means for the industry. Ciao!
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