Plagiarism or Coincidence: The Ballet Stage Before Copyright Prevailed

On 11 July 1862 the French ballet master Jules Perrot took his old friend, colleague and compatriot Marius Petipa to court in Paris. The dispute concerned a dance ‘La Cosmopolite’ which Petipa had staged at the Paris Opera, and claimed as his own, for his then-wife Maria Surovshchikova. Perrot believed the dance to be nothing other than his own ‘La Cosmopolitana’, a pas from his ballet Gazelda. The lawsuit was almost certainly the first for copyright in ballet: although ownership of a literary work was recognized, ownership of a ballet was a foggier concept. I propose to look at the court submissions in some detail. They bring up several interesting arguments and underline the particular complexities of distinguishing dance authorship at a time when choreography was rarely written down and both dancers and ballet masters had only a relaxed attitude to its accuracy.

Nadine Meisner was a dance critic, writing for The Times, Sunday Times and Independent, and the deputy editor of a monthly magazine, Dance & Dancers. After 25 years, she decided to turn her energies to writing a book, Marius Petipa, the Emperor’s Ballet Master, which was published by Oxford University Press in 2019.