Works of art often reference other works of art, so is the Belgian choreographer right to accuse the R&B star of plagiarism in her new music video?Initially, De Keersmaeker was pretty acid about the whole thing, saying that she'd seen local school kids perform her work better, and expressing amazement at the Beyoncé team's effrontery. "I'm not mad, but this is plagiarism. This is stealing," she told Studio Brussel. And up to a point you have to sympathise with her; the notion of the artist ripped off by the corporate machine is not an edifying one. Petty's attitude is certainly high-handed. "I brought Beyoncé a number of references and we picked some out together. Most were German modern-dance references, believe it or not," she told MTV, possibly under the impression that she was referencing the work of the late Pina Bausch, rather than that of the Belgian (and very much alive) De Keersmaeker.
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And she may well be right. Watch Beyoncé's new Countdown video, directed by Adria Petty , and watch Thierry De Mey's 1997 film Rosas Danst Rosas (named after De Keersmaeker's company) and you can see remarkably similar moves in the two works. They're a tiny part of the whole, but they're there.
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