ABSTRACT
This chapter explores United Kingdom copyright law since it has been shaped by the European Union jurisprudence. Although some dance organizations have highly developed copyright strategies, copyright for other companies and individuals may seem rarely to be of relevance. Copyright law has as its heart the author who is the person who creates the work. The manifestation of this lies in the term of protection of copyright that, for dramatic works including dance, is linked to the life of the author and lasts for seventy years after death. The process of creating a dance is key to being able to identify the author of the dance for copyright law. Dance and copyright share an obsession with individual authorship. Although subject to extensive theoretical and practical criticism, some philosophical discourse on copyright reifies the notion of the individual author toiling away to create a new work.
