January 14, 2006

Dancers Share Their Challenges

Here are two stories, directly from dancers themselves, that offer painfull insight into the precarious nature of pursuing a dance career:

- In the December 2005 edition of Dance Magazine, Rosalynde LeBlanc, a freelance performer and teacher in New York City, writes "Turning point: inside the mind of a 30-something female modern dancer". Rosalynde LeBlanc tells a compelling story about the financial challenges faced by modern dancers who want to make enough money to support a family. She eventually gets an Equity card to audition for Broadway shows, but her heart isn't in it. She writes:

... what does ignite my spirit is the impoverished world of modern dance. Since childhood, when I took the Ballet/Modern/Jazz class, (in which all three disciplines were offered in one swoop like a cross section of Neapolitan ice cream) my affinity for modern was obvious. I was a shy, day-dreaming tomboy. The sophistication of jazz and the proprieties of ballet were ill-fitting on me. Modern dance--with its celebration of the individual, its emphasis on expression, its patient successes, and its androgyny--captured my heart. Now, after 20 years the rhythms and principles of modern dance are infused in my being. And some of their strongest indications are in my criteria for seeking work. "Who's choreographing?" is habitually my first question. I have to force myself to ask, "How much?" I am well trained to have the lowest monetary expectations and have learned how to make do in the direst circumstances.

Thanks to Rachel Feinerman of Downtown Dancer for linking to Rosalynde LeBlanc's story. In Rachel's post, "Taking Up Space," she contrasts the constant financial struggles faced by dancers with an upbeat story in the New York Times about the recent growth in new dance venues in Manhattan. She writes:

I’m not one to dismiss all these great new buildings but the crisis on the ground is that dancers at the top of their training, at the peak of their professional life, are poor and without health insurance and leaving the arts world in droves to finally make some money on Broadway or with Celine Dion in Vegas. The crisis is that when you accidentally slip and fall in one of these nice, new buildings, you have no insurance with which to see a doctor nor any money to pay for the cast on your wrist. The crisis is that you have to retire at age 35, not because you can’t dance anymore, but because you can’t afford to dance anymore. Its wonderful to have new buildings. Just don’t dismiss the dancers.

- The second article, published by The Dance Insider, is from an unnamed dancer with the Indianapolis, Indiana-based Ballet Internationale, which shut its doors on November 9, 2005. The dancers, without any warning, were told that their ballet company was being shut down and they were out of work. No Nutcracker. No performances. They had one and a half hours to collect their things and get out of the building. The anonymous dancer continues:

You can imagine everyone's shock to be left jobless with no future prospects of the company getting back together. It is not easy, even mostly impossible, for a dancer to find a job mid-season. Most of the company is foreign, which means some face the risk of being deported, and some may even have to go into the army if sent back to their home countries.

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