Videos from her concert uploaded onto the net show Beyoncé’s dancers performing a routine in water. Their movements were all too familiar to Swedish choreographer Alexander Ekman.

“I saw a clip on YouTube,” he says. “It was a weird feeling. Like seeing my own ideas in an enormous forum in front of a huge audience without me being involved.”

Choreography taken from ”The swan lake”

The choreography used by Beyoncé is taken from Alexander Ekman’s work “The swan lake”, which was staged in 2014 at the opera in Oslo, where it is soon due for a revival.

“I know that they’ve been inspired by my Swan Lake,” he continues. “It’s how her team works. It’s common for them to communicate over having access to a so-called mood board, but ultimately they steal rather than ‘copy but make better’. It’s not as if I’ve got sole rights over aquatic dance, but in this case I know it was my choreography.”

In a video clip on Instagram, Alexander Ekman compares his choreography with Beyoncé’s.

“Beyoncé’s known on the dance scene for stealing from modern choreographers,” he says. “They say that imitation is the highest form of flattery, but it’s still aggravating. What possibilities or rights do I have in such a situation? It’s an interesting discussion to bring up.”

”It's almost identical”

Belgian choreographer Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui also recognises his own work in Beyoncé’s show.

In 2008, he staged a modern dance performance with a set design based on a couple of hollow wooden crates that could be stacked, spun and knocked over in a domino effect with the dancers inside.

It has been almost eight years since the work was premiered, so he was astonished when a clip from Beyoncé’s tour appeared in which she dances in crates very much like the ones he had used, with similar movements.

“In Beyoncé’s version they used certain movements that we had developed in a very similar way – it was almost identical,” says Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui.

No response from Beyoncé

At first he chose to let it lie, but then started to feel uneasy about the suspected theft and asked his team to contact Beyoncé’s to sort matters out. But nothing happened.

“They never got back to us,” he says.

The theft of his work makes him feel forgotten. 

“I tried to take it with a smile and to be happy that she likes something I did. But if I think about it too much… I try not to dwell on it. It can be quite upsetting.

“I think it’s wonderful when artists honour other artists. But when your ideas are literally copied it can feel as if you’ve been screwed over, especially given that I’d love to get to work with Beyoncé and do something for her, together.”

Beyoncé already has the eyes of the modern dance scene firmly on her. In the video to her 2011 hit Countdown she copied Belgian choreographer Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker’s “Rosas danst Rosas” from 1983.

American director and choreographer Bob Fosse and Swiss video artist Pipilotti Rist have also been at the centre of o a debate on theft linked to Beyoncé.

Kulturnyheternas has reached out to representatives for Beyoncé.