Trupti Panigrahi (QMUL) - 2023-24 Students
t.panigrahi@qmul.ac.uk

Dancing Legally

Trupti’s project is examining the peculiarity of Indian classical dances and the scope of their protection within Indian Copyright Law. While the law protects dance-choreographies as a subset of dramatic works requiring storyline, ancient Indian dance literature understands drama as a sub-set of dance, which can be non-narrative. The requirement of storyline thence leaves the innovation in non-narrative forms of Indian classical dance choreographies, without copyright protection. In this scenario, the project proposes to examine the relevance of copyright law to innovation in Indian classical dance choreographies, as well as the important interaction between copyright claims of choreographers and personality rights of celebrities who may have popularised that choreography. The project seeks to understand the scope of fixation of Indian classical dances, both culturally and legally, and to see if they can be protected without any literary counterpart, or if sui generis protection is necessary to address this complex environment and what that might look like.

Primary supervisor: Professor Johanna Gibson

Secondary supervisor: Gavin Sutter