It's been a while since I've done a list post. And it's Halloween weekend, so I thought I'd have a little fun with this one. If you are looking for high-brow, in-depth quality content, stay tuned for my next post or look at my previous posts via this link. For now, please enjoy these 11 SCARY thoughts that different types of dancers have.
via GIPHY
The Freelance Dancer - "Well, this is a really nice gig, but I don't have anything else lined up after this. Could this be the end of my career?"
via GIPHY
The Street Dancer - "What if this subway car slams on the breaks while I'm doing my big finale?"
via GIPHY
The Company Dancer - "If I show up to class in costume, will the director think that I'm not serious about my dance career and take it out on me in casting?"
via GIPHY
The Open Class Dancer -"What am I going to make for dinner after this class?"
via GIPHY
The Broadway Dancer - "If I have to do this show one more time, will I lose my mind!"
via GIPHY
The Break Dancer - "Does spinning on my head increase my risk of balding?"
via GIPHY
The Pre-Professional Dancer - "This is my second year at this finishing program. If I don't get a job by the end of this year, does that mean I need to quit and go to college?"
via GIPHY
The Ballroom Dancer - "Why is she talking to that other guy over there? Is she plotting to switch partners?"
via GIPHY
The Recreational Dancer - "What will ever come of my true aspirations to have a dance career if I'm not cast as Clara in The Nutcracker this year?"
via GIPHY
The Club Dancer - "If I go out there and dance, everybody is clearly going to only be watching and judging me, right?"
via GIPHY
The Stay-at-Home Dancer - "What if my Husband is secretly filming me sing and dance to my 90's playlist while I am vacuuming the floor to post it on the internet?"
via GIPHY
Showing posts with label company. Show all posts
Showing posts with label company. Show all posts
1.23.2016
Money Talks - Determining Your Value
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| My student, Emiko Inskeep, created this image of me |
First things first, we need to approach this question from back to front. How does one determine their value? This is a difficult question. Dancers are trained from a young age to keep their mouths closed and their egos humble (at least verbally). One could look at many factors in their career to determine their worth. How many years have I danced professionally? What companies have I danced for? How diverse is my experience? What is my repertoire? Am I female or male (not that this should be a question, but it is a commodity-based reality of the dance world)? While these are great questions to ask oneself prior to entering the freelance world, the truth of the matter is that you don't get to determine your value. You only get to influence the perception of your value.
Each dancer's true value is fluid, especially as a freelance artist. It is easy to feel that your worth is the same across the board when you dance for a company regularly at a consistent rank. But there are situations that can alter that consistent value, as well. For instance, if a new director steps in, your value changes. If you leave your company as a Soloist and join a new one, you may not be asked to join at the same rank. Your value, unfortunately, is not fully declared by you or your dancing. Instead, it is determined by the opinions of those who are responsible for hiring, casting, and paying. Only you get to choose if you accept that valuation.
Now that you have decided to find work outside of a negotiated company contract, you are forced to come to grips with the fact that your value is not a simple, concrete determination. Still, you have to decide what you consider your lowest value to be. I'd like to say that your highest value should be the marker to pay more attention to. But in our underfunded dance world, it is more important to have a base integrity value. This is the marker that will determine whether you accept a job or not.
When I first started taking freelance work, I thought that my base value was in line with the negotiated weekly rate that I received while dancing with Pacific Northwest Ballet. Unfortunately, I quickly realized that my cushy, big-company paycheck was not my lowest asking price for most of my gigs. While I had a lot of great experience on my resume, I learned that my original base rate needed to be the minimum wage I had to make in order to cover my monthly bills. I knew that I couldn't work a job that didn't cover these costs out of pure practicality. Unless I had a cushion of money from a feast-period of work, I could only accept work that met this minimum.
While I didn't ever ask for my baseline rate of pay, I knew that I would only consider work that I could negotiate to that rate or higher. It took me a period of time to increase my value in the eyes and mind of future employers. A great deal of that bettered perception in value, surprisingly, didn't come from the additional experience I was getting as a freelance artist. The experience was there. Instead, my value spiked the more popular this blog became. As I grew a following on this platform and began to have a greater social media presence, employers started seeing me as a more experienced and trusted commodity. All of a sudden, I went from a dancer who was quietly accruing achievements and experience to somebody that could be seen visibly as valuable and trustworthy in my work and credentials. Essentially, my value increased in the opinions of others.
Once I began to get more exposure as a freelancer, I was able to bring my base value up to a higher rate than my original minimum-to-pay-my-bills rate. While my rate had improved greatly over time, there were a few experiences where I had to rely on my base wage during famine-periods. While this became less common, there were still a few gigs each year that I would take at my lower rate. I did this for multiple reasons that ranged from wanting to dance with a certain choreographer to just wanting to be working. So, as you can see, my value became fluid dependent upon the time period, work load, and experience offered by dancing with a company.
An additional item to note when considering your value, determinations may also depend on the financial state of a company. If one company has a smaller budget than another, their lower monetary offering may hold the same bearing as another company with better fiscal options. For instance, while one company may pay you $800/week to dance with them, you may not be their highest valued dancer. But if another company offers $500/week, you may be their highest paid and valued dancer. All organizations are not created equal. For instance, when I danced with the now defunct Alaska Dance Theatre, I was the highest paid artist at $530/week. While it was far below my minimum asking price (they supplemented my salary by giving me classes to teach in the school), I knew that they were doing all they could to give me the highest value that they had available to offer.
Now that you have a gauge to determine your value, you can go into negotiating pay from a few angles. I prefer to let the hiring organization make their own offer of payment. My reasoning for this is because I like to have an idea of what the organization has to work with. If I go into a negotiation asking way too high, it may turn the organization off from wanting to work with me. But if I go into the negotiation asking way below what the company was considering, it hurts my bottom line. It's not so much that I'm losing value. Instead, being able to create a cushion of cash flow helps me pay my self-employment taxes at the end of the year, pay off debts that I accrue during famine periods, and keep myself inspired to continue working in this challenging career-style.
While some organizations immediately offer financial considerations, I have found that admin who are in charge of offering a rate are often just as uncomfortable as dancers in talking money. It has been common to have employers ask me to tell them my fees. If I have to do this, I have come to learn that it is best to let the organization know that my fees are negotiable from the start. This let's the company know that I am willing to work with them on finding a pay scale that works best for both of us.
As you can see, it is important to approach the freelancing lifestyle with a sense of fluidity. Many of us feel worthwhile and confident because of our own perception of our value. And I continue to encourage dancers to feel this way. But freelancers can't approach negotiating work purely based on their own idea of their value. One must be willing to judge their financial value separate from their perceived value. Attaching your worth to the height of your paycheck will do nothing but affect your ability to enjoy the work that you are doing.
2.02.2014
Emotional Training in Ballet
After writing about the challenges of success last week, I've had a
handful of conversations about success and failure. The world of dance,
and beyond, idolizes a story of failure and adversity that opens up unknown doors, eventually leading to hard-won success. Who doesn't love a
good cinematic happy ending? Unfortunately, for students in training
and professionals with big goals, things don't always turn out that way.
For this reason, there are many former and current dancers living jaded
with emotional pain, regret, and without closure from the wounds that
often go along with such a challenging, strenuous, and personal effort.
While
out in Los Angeles prepping to perform for one of my many Nutcracker gigs, I
found myself in a conversation consoling a former dancer about her
training years. I was staying with my friend and the woman, who was
subletting her brother's room while he is out of town working on an FX
series, just happened to be a dancer that was in Pacific Northwest Ballet's school during my first few years with the company. Valeska Mosich-Miller and I knew each other from that time, but didn't really
interact much. In most schools attached to a company, there is a clear
delineation between company talking to school and school talking to
company (school students rarely approach company members). Although we
had little interaction during that time, I surely remembered her. The
reason being that I, and most other company members, recognized that she
had stunning looks and a beautiful, tall stature. Many dancers would
comment that she should find an agent and become a model. Apparently, we weren't the only ones that felt that way.
Valeska
left PNB's school to train elsewhere for a short period of time. After a
handful of unsuccessful auditions, she stopped searching for a company
to call home because she started getting picked up by multiple modeling
agencies across the world in places like Brazil, South Africa, London,
and Los Angeles. While spending a week living with Valeska and catching
up on where we are in our lives, we went out to dinner and had a very
striking conversation. While Valeska has had great successes that most
people could only dream of having, she was still struggling with the
loss of her ballet career and her perception of wasted effort that was
put into so many years of training.
I could tell that nearly 5 years of time away from ballet had not healed the emotional trauma and wounds of rejection that the ballet world can place upon dancers. Being that I am very interested in teaching future generations of dance artists, I have put a lot of thought into the whats and whys of a ballet career and how training affects young dancers. And what I have determined is that ballet training is essentially survival of the fittest.
Classical ballet instruction is extremely harsh on the body. Aside from the physical requirements of natural flexibility, accurate proportions, strength, and aesthetic; a dancer needs emotional fortitude to truly make it in this career. How is a dancer going to cope with casting that isn't in their favor? Will a dancer be able to continue with a performance after receiving bad news? What does a dancer do if they mess up onstage? Each one of these items can really challenge a dancer's ability to handle the stresses of a dance career. The physical demands of training will prepare one to execute the most difficult of feats with ease. While the emotional aspects of training ensure that a dancer doesn't fall apart in high stress situations. Unfortunately, the concept of emotional training is rarely revealed to students throughout their studies. Perhaps, because teachers aren't even aware that they are teaching it.
Very few of my teachers really explained much about the emotional challenges of dancing other than saying, "Ballet is hard," "People get injured," or, "You don't want to be stuck in the corps." That is until I started training under Jock Soto at the School of American Ballet. One day I particularly remember, Jock had stopped class after a student was having a mini-breakdown over the failed execution of a partnering combination. Trying to calm the student down and keep their head in the game, he stated, "Your grandfather just passed away and you got a phone call minutes before you step onstage to premiere the lead in Theme and Variations. That gray-haired lady seated in the orchestra paid $200 for her ticket and has no idea about your troubles. No matter what happens you must always perform to your best abilities because all the audience knows is that they paid a lot of money to see a good show." This comment seemed utterly heartless having never heard anything like it before. I remember many conversations after class where we tried to validate that what he had been saying was just downright heartless. But I can now tell you from experience, I have watched this exact story happen. I've experienced traumas and performed while reeling through an emotional life experience. It is a part of the job and our training helps us deal with this. Now, if only, as teenagers and young adults, we knew that a handful of the comments and experiences we have on the road to success are a part of the training, and not always teachers and directors playing mind games.
It is very common for students who never become professionals and professionals who never become principals to focus their anger and bitterness towards the last organization or two that they feel let them down or kept them from achieving their dream. I don't think this is avoidable and, sometimes, agree with these dancer's feelings. Unfortunately, though, these dancers got weeded out by ballet's survival of the fittest training. If your body is too weak, it will break down often. If your body doesn't fit the aesthetic, and dancers go to dangerous lengths to fit the mold, they will not make it through the training. I am always asked about anorexic and bulimic dancers, as is every professional in the field. I typically respond that there were some sick dancers while I was training. But for the most part, the career is too challenging to maintain that lifestyle and those dancers with eating problems fall apart before they finish their training or within a year of obtaining a job. If a dancer's technique isn't strong enough and they audition for years and years and eventually give up, they have been weeded out. If a dancer had everything going for them and obtains a job, but quits a year or two in because they didn't have a fairytale rise to the top, they have again been weeded out. There are so many challenges that ballet presents to dancers that make sure that the last dancers standing are those onstage and selling tickets.
It is rare to find a teacher or director that is so especially harsh that they seek to destroy a dancer's love for ballet. There are exceptions to the rule, but it isn't common. Most leaders want a dancer to succeed at what they are doing. The misinterpretation of emotional training is often the downfall of many potential dance careers. When one is involved in a school or institution, that one place becomes the dancer's entire world. My favorite example of this takes place at the dance academy where I was raised. Every year when Nutcracker casting is posted, parents call the director shouting, "WHY DIDN'T MY DAUGHTER GET CLARA." In a fair-sized school in the suburbs of Philadelphia, like clockwork, parents freak out because their child wasn't handed a role just for showing up and paying their tuition. Within days, studio gossip ensues and one small performance becomes a big ordeal, as if it is the make it or break it moment of their child's life. People forget that somebody is always going to be at the top and somebody is always going to be at the bottom. It is like this in school and it is like this in a company. It can become difficult to remember that there are hundreds of schools and companies across the country. And if a dancer is truly unhappy, they can always look elsewhere for an improved situation. Rejection and disappointment tend to be one of ballet's first emotional lessons.
If a dancer is truly talented and being overlooked, it may be time to try somewhere new or to understand that sometimes you are the best and sometimes you are the worst. And sometimes it is all a matter of needs and timing. Dancers often forget, like Valeska did, that ballet is based purely on opinion. Casting decisions and class placement often upset people because there is no formal basis to judge technique, artistry, and performance. Maybe a director put a dancer onstage for a specific role because they thought big eyes would look good in that role. Perhaps, she doesn't have the best technique, but she is intriguing to look at and intrigue sells more tickets than technique. And if the same group of dancers travel from state to state, school to school, or company to company whilst performing the same work, different opinions and choices may put completely different dancers onstage at every institution. There is no best dancer. There is, instead, I prefer this dancer.
What it comes down to is that ballet is often full of political opinion. The end goal of an institution is to put productions onstage as best they can and to please its' patrons and donors. Dancers are just pieces of a puzzle that need to be fit together. If a dancer doesn't fit in a certain part of the puzzle, then they don't fit. A company can't be so concerned about hurting a dancer's feelings that the quality of a production becomes a secondary priority. While dancer's feelings may get hurt, it is rarely personal. Ballet doesn't remember that dancers are human beings with emotions. But people do (and should). For this reason, it is the human side, or artistic staff, of an organization that is responsible in ensuring that there is still humane treatment towards a dancer who may be disappointed by casting or has been left out of a performance during their integral final years of training. This is often where emotional training fails. Instead of having a hard, potentially disappointing conversation, many company and school directors prefer to keep quiet about their reasoning. This leaves dancers to make assumptions that may be far from the truth. Maybe staff feels that they don't owe the dancer an explanation for putting them in the second cast of the corps after giving them a leading role in the last production. Or perhaps, that corps member isn't being cast well to test and see if they can handle performing less, which often occurs during the first years after promotion to soloist. Why can't a dancer just be told that they are being tested, instead of creating circumstances and sitting back to watch their reaction. Directors owe the human being, not the dancer, a reason for casting disappointments, frustrating circumstances, and mixed signals.
A great amount of emotional training happens every day in dance. I have found that, more often than not, the higher powers of dance organizations don't even realize that they are taking part in this important aspect of training. Since ballet is passed on by oral tradition, there is no text book on the exact way to train a dancer. My teachers taught me what their teachers taught them and so on and so on. Every generation tries to take the best part of their training and pass it on, while attempting to avoid passing on the worst parts of their training. But, sometimes, the harshest parts of their training were to make sure that they could survive in our stressful profession. Unfortunately, there are often better ways to go about things and those with power aren't even aware that they are doing more than just training the physicality of a dancer. If students are more aware of the emotional tests that they will be put through, they may have greater lasting power. It is really confusing for a teenager to understand that there are tests in our training, beyond how high one can developpe or how many pirouettes one can execute, if they are not made aware of it. Emotional strength is just as important a factor as technique in becoming a successful dancer.
I
felt for Valeska while we talked out her training trauma over tasty
pork bao at a trendy L.A. eatery. And at the end of our conversation,
she was shocked that she may have been ignored in school as a test to see if she
could handle being ignored in a company. Or maybe she just didn't fit into the intricate puzzle of the school that year. Years and years of resentment
didn't disappear, but she seemed more at ease with what was a very
disheartening and hurtful time of her life. Over the last decade there
has been a greater push to help preserve the bodies of dancers through
proper maintenance, cross training, and better body awareness. Today, I would
like to call upon the dance world to do the same thing with the
dancer's mind. We need to start treating dancers with respect, openness,
and honesty. There needs to be more support for teenagers who are
working as high-level adults, often living on their own, and dealing
with insane amounts of pressure. Bringing awareness and structure to the
emotional training that is necessary to have a successful career will
be the next step in extending the life of a dance career.
What do you think we can do to improve the emotional struggles that dancers experience in their training?
 |
| Valeska Mosich-Miller in Clara Magazine |
 |
| Valeska Mosich-Miller in Marie Claire |
I could tell that nearly 5 years of time away from ballet had not healed the emotional trauma and wounds of rejection that the ballet world can place upon dancers. Being that I am very interested in teaching future generations of dance artists, I have put a lot of thought into the whats and whys of a ballet career and how training affects young dancers. And what I have determined is that ballet training is essentially survival of the fittest.
Classical ballet instruction is extremely harsh on the body. Aside from the physical requirements of natural flexibility, accurate proportions, strength, and aesthetic; a dancer needs emotional fortitude to truly make it in this career. How is a dancer going to cope with casting that isn't in their favor? Will a dancer be able to continue with a performance after receiving bad news? What does a dancer do if they mess up onstage? Each one of these items can really challenge a dancer's ability to handle the stresses of a dance career. The physical demands of training will prepare one to execute the most difficult of feats with ease. While the emotional aspects of training ensure that a dancer doesn't fall apart in high stress situations. Unfortunately, the concept of emotional training is rarely revealed to students throughout their studies. Perhaps, because teachers aren't even aware that they are teaching it.
Very few of my teachers really explained much about the emotional challenges of dancing other than saying, "Ballet is hard," "People get injured," or, "You don't want to be stuck in the corps." That is until I started training under Jock Soto at the School of American Ballet. One day I particularly remember, Jock had stopped class after a student was having a mini-breakdown over the failed execution of a partnering combination. Trying to calm the student down and keep their head in the game, he stated, "Your grandfather just passed away and you got a phone call minutes before you step onstage to premiere the lead in Theme and Variations. That gray-haired lady seated in the orchestra paid $200 for her ticket and has no idea about your troubles. No matter what happens you must always perform to your best abilities because all the audience knows is that they paid a lot of money to see a good show." This comment seemed utterly heartless having never heard anything like it before. I remember many conversations after class where we tried to validate that what he had been saying was just downright heartless. But I can now tell you from experience, I have watched this exact story happen. I've experienced traumas and performed while reeling through an emotional life experience. It is a part of the job and our training helps us deal with this. Now, if only, as teenagers and young adults, we knew that a handful of the comments and experiences we have on the road to success are a part of the training, and not always teachers and directors playing mind games.
It is very common for students who never become professionals and professionals who never become principals to focus their anger and bitterness towards the last organization or two that they feel let them down or kept them from achieving their dream. I don't think this is avoidable and, sometimes, agree with these dancer's feelings. Unfortunately, though, these dancers got weeded out by ballet's survival of the fittest training. If your body is too weak, it will break down often. If your body doesn't fit the aesthetic, and dancers go to dangerous lengths to fit the mold, they will not make it through the training. I am always asked about anorexic and bulimic dancers, as is every professional in the field. I typically respond that there were some sick dancers while I was training. But for the most part, the career is too challenging to maintain that lifestyle and those dancers with eating problems fall apart before they finish their training or within a year of obtaining a job. If a dancer's technique isn't strong enough and they audition for years and years and eventually give up, they have been weeded out. If a dancer had everything going for them and obtains a job, but quits a year or two in because they didn't have a fairytale rise to the top, they have again been weeded out. There are so many challenges that ballet presents to dancers that make sure that the last dancers standing are those onstage and selling tickets.
It is rare to find a teacher or director that is so especially harsh that they seek to destroy a dancer's love for ballet. There are exceptions to the rule, but it isn't common. Most leaders want a dancer to succeed at what they are doing. The misinterpretation of emotional training is often the downfall of many potential dance careers. When one is involved in a school or institution, that one place becomes the dancer's entire world. My favorite example of this takes place at the dance academy where I was raised. Every year when Nutcracker casting is posted, parents call the director shouting, "WHY DIDN'T MY DAUGHTER GET CLARA." In a fair-sized school in the suburbs of Philadelphia, like clockwork, parents freak out because their child wasn't handed a role just for showing up and paying their tuition. Within days, studio gossip ensues and one small performance becomes a big ordeal, as if it is the make it or break it moment of their child's life. People forget that somebody is always going to be at the top and somebody is always going to be at the bottom. It is like this in school and it is like this in a company. It can become difficult to remember that there are hundreds of schools and companies across the country. And if a dancer is truly unhappy, they can always look elsewhere for an improved situation. Rejection and disappointment tend to be one of ballet's first emotional lessons.
If a dancer is truly talented and being overlooked, it may be time to try somewhere new or to understand that sometimes you are the best and sometimes you are the worst. And sometimes it is all a matter of needs and timing. Dancers often forget, like Valeska did, that ballet is based purely on opinion. Casting decisions and class placement often upset people because there is no formal basis to judge technique, artistry, and performance. Maybe a director put a dancer onstage for a specific role because they thought big eyes would look good in that role. Perhaps, she doesn't have the best technique, but she is intriguing to look at and intrigue sells more tickets than technique. And if the same group of dancers travel from state to state, school to school, or company to company whilst performing the same work, different opinions and choices may put completely different dancers onstage at every institution. There is no best dancer. There is, instead, I prefer this dancer.
What it comes down to is that ballet is often full of political opinion. The end goal of an institution is to put productions onstage as best they can and to please its' patrons and donors. Dancers are just pieces of a puzzle that need to be fit together. If a dancer doesn't fit in a certain part of the puzzle, then they don't fit. A company can't be so concerned about hurting a dancer's feelings that the quality of a production becomes a secondary priority. While dancer's feelings may get hurt, it is rarely personal. Ballet doesn't remember that dancers are human beings with emotions. But people do (and should). For this reason, it is the human side, or artistic staff, of an organization that is responsible in ensuring that there is still humane treatment towards a dancer who may be disappointed by casting or has been left out of a performance during their integral final years of training. This is often where emotional training fails. Instead of having a hard, potentially disappointing conversation, many company and school directors prefer to keep quiet about their reasoning. This leaves dancers to make assumptions that may be far from the truth. Maybe staff feels that they don't owe the dancer an explanation for putting them in the second cast of the corps after giving them a leading role in the last production. Or perhaps, that corps member isn't being cast well to test and see if they can handle performing less, which often occurs during the first years after promotion to soloist. Why can't a dancer just be told that they are being tested, instead of creating circumstances and sitting back to watch their reaction. Directors owe the human being, not the dancer, a reason for casting disappointments, frustrating circumstances, and mixed signals.
A great amount of emotional training happens every day in dance. I have found that, more often than not, the higher powers of dance organizations don't even realize that they are taking part in this important aspect of training. Since ballet is passed on by oral tradition, there is no text book on the exact way to train a dancer. My teachers taught me what their teachers taught them and so on and so on. Every generation tries to take the best part of their training and pass it on, while attempting to avoid passing on the worst parts of their training. But, sometimes, the harshest parts of their training were to make sure that they could survive in our stressful profession. Unfortunately, there are often better ways to go about things and those with power aren't even aware that they are doing more than just training the physicality of a dancer. If students are more aware of the emotional tests that they will be put through, they may have greater lasting power. It is really confusing for a teenager to understand that there are tests in our training, beyond how high one can developpe or how many pirouettes one can execute, if they are not made aware of it. Emotional strength is just as important a factor as technique in becoming a successful dancer.
 |
| Valeska Mosich-Miller (Photo: Patrick Fraser) |
What do you think we can do to improve the emotional struggles that dancers experience in their training?
5.09.2013
Video Break - Performing "The Nutcracker" grand pas de deux
This past week I received my first offer to perform a guesting for the 2013 Nutcracker season. Even though it is only the beginning of May, many schools and companies are already beginning to prepare for this holiday delight. The Nutcracker is often future professionals introduction to ballet. And although most of us pros have a massive-love hate relationship with the ballet, we know that it inspires and pays the bills. Last year, I had the wonderful opportunity to perform in Ballet Nova's The Nutcracker in Arlington, Virginia with a very talented 16-year old student that came up through the school. Below you can see a majority of the grand pas de deux that we performed together with mere hours of rehearsal time together. Enjoy!
3.17.2013
The Mental Game of Freelancing
Look who was recently featured on renowned photographer Jordan Matter's "Dancers Among Us" Facebook page. Although my image didn't make the final cut into his New York Times Bestseller, I was also featured in his blog during the creation of this beautiful book. Being photographed by this man was a wildly unforgettable experience and I hope to be a part of his future projects.
Now that I've got that out, moving on to this weeks' posting. I have a handful of topics that I want to write about this week, but I always feel more compelled to write on subjects that directly relate to things/emotions I am currently experiencing. One subject that I find comes up most often in conversation with my freelancing friends is whether or not we want to continue freelancing. Finding work on the fly is not only stressful, but often poses the threat of career, relationship, and financial disaster. While these fears are always looming in the back of every freelancers mind, we continue to dance because we love it and we continue to freelance in order to sustain ourselves. A combination of passionate (and sometimes blind) drive and fear for survival often cause nomadic dancers to swing back and forth between the choices of continuing freelancing, finding more stable company work, or quitting altogether.
I have discussed this in past posts and want to revisit the reasons that most dancers begin freelancing. A large amount of people who freelance do so because they were not able to obtain a job with a full-time company. Often, this is due to the fact that they just weren't in the right place at the right time or they were fresh out of school and still developing as a dancer. Another reason that many people start freelancing is because they feel that they have reached a certain point in their career with a company and want to go out on their own to find more fulfilling work. There are also people, like me, who were thrust out into the world of freelancing against their will. After spending a handful of months dancing with a company that I left PNB to join, I became injured during a rehearsal. Details aside, the young company broke my contract when I tried to take time off to heal because they didn't want to support an injured dancer. This happened in the middle of the company's season and right at the end of audition season. I was injured and couldn't get better in time to make myself presentable for company auditions. And at the same time, I didn't want to move from the city that I had just moved to only months before. Thus, I began healing and set out to become an established freelancer. Other reasons for freelancing include change of location for non-career reasons, short seasonal company contracts, and more.
Looking at the list above, you can see that freelancers become who they are for more reasons that are out of their control than those in their control. For those of us that didn't make the choice to freelance, aside from the fact that we knew we wanted dance to continue as the focus of our careers, it can become easy to start questioning the track of our career. Many dancers enter freelancing with a clear intention of joining a company in the future. But as you become more popular in your field and hold a busier schedule, the line blurs and the tendency is to flip-flop between company aspirations and the never-ending quest for the next gig. At what point do you know that you are ready to commit to another season as a freelancer or to start prepping for audition season?
There are many stresses involved in the art of freelancing that can push you in different directions. Dance/work-related stresses include (and are not limited to) finding work, staying in shape, quality of work, continuing to grow as an artist, feeling fulfilled in the work you are doing, and feeling like your value is represented by treatment and pay. Personal stresses include (among others) location, time away from home, works' affect on personal relationships, financial survivability, and work-life balance. Seeking to attain some sort of balance of these stresses can make it very difficult to make the conscious decision to continue freelancing. If a dancer chooses to take a two month gig across the country, how will that decision affect their two year relationship that they are leaving behind at home? Or if a dancer chooses only to seek work with academies and schools because the pay is greater than company work, how does that affect their feelings of fulfillment and growth? What if a dancer risks all of the stresses that are important to them only to find that the work they accepted is not up to par with what they had been expecting? Freelancing is a difficult choice because it carries such great risk and affects much more than your work-life.
While I have had some experiences that have brought me to some low places on my list, I have also had my fair share of great highs throughout my career in freelancing. One of my biggest goals I had hoped to accomplish during my dance career was to travel and see the world through my work. I couldn't do that in the companies I was dancing for full-time. I also found out that I have a lot more respect for myself as a classical ballet dancer after performing in a gala for a gig. This was an opportunity that I wouldn't have been offered while dancing at PNB, where I was pigeon-holed into the role of a contemporary specialist. While some of my freelancing experiences have made me feel less than valuable, many more have built my confidence to new levels and offered me experiences that weren't offered to me in my life as a company dancer.
Looking at these abridged lists of stressors that can affect your career as a freelancer, it becomes quite clear that there is great push and pull in the mind of a freelance dancer. At what point does a nomad choose to find more stable living? When does the choice to live wild versus living a normal life become too overwhelming to continue? Obviously, I am not in a place to tell people what their breaking point may be, but I can at least open up this topic for discussion on this forum and let people know that it is absolutely normal to question living the gypsy life. It is in every freelance dancer's best interest to constantly assess their needs, fulfillment, and happiness in order to remain healthy, stay at the top of their game, and to live a sustainable/enjoyable lifestyle. With all of these things in consideration, the mental games that freelancing presents are much easier to understand.
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| Performing w/Alaska Dance Theatre in Duran's "Cash & Cline" (Photo: Gutierrez Photgraphy) |
I have discussed this in past posts and want to revisit the reasons that most dancers begin freelancing. A large amount of people who freelance do so because they were not able to obtain a job with a full-time company. Often, this is due to the fact that they just weren't in the right place at the right time or they were fresh out of school and still developing as a dancer. Another reason that many people start freelancing is because they feel that they have reached a certain point in their career with a company and want to go out on their own to find more fulfilling work. There are also people, like me, who were thrust out into the world of freelancing against their will. After spending a handful of months dancing with a company that I left PNB to join, I became injured during a rehearsal. Details aside, the young company broke my contract when I tried to take time off to heal because they didn't want to support an injured dancer. This happened in the middle of the company's season and right at the end of audition season. I was injured and couldn't get better in time to make myself presentable for company auditions. And at the same time, I didn't want to move from the city that I had just moved to only months before. Thus, I began healing and set out to become an established freelancer. Other reasons for freelancing include change of location for non-career reasons, short seasonal company contracts, and more.
Looking at the list above, you can see that freelancers become who they are for more reasons that are out of their control than those in their control. For those of us that didn't make the choice to freelance, aside from the fact that we knew we wanted dance to continue as the focus of our careers, it can become easy to start questioning the track of our career. Many dancers enter freelancing with a clear intention of joining a company in the future. But as you become more popular in your field and hold a busier schedule, the line blurs and the tendency is to flip-flop between company aspirations and the never-ending quest for the next gig. At what point do you know that you are ready to commit to another season as a freelancer or to start prepping for audition season?
There are many stresses involved in the art of freelancing that can push you in different directions. Dance/work-related stresses include (and are not limited to) finding work, staying in shape, quality of work, continuing to grow as an artist, feeling fulfilled in the work you are doing, and feeling like your value is represented by treatment and pay. Personal stresses include (among others) location, time away from home, works' affect on personal relationships, financial survivability, and work-life balance. Seeking to attain some sort of balance of these stresses can make it very difficult to make the conscious decision to continue freelancing. If a dancer chooses to take a two month gig across the country, how will that decision affect their two year relationship that they are leaving behind at home? Or if a dancer chooses only to seek work with academies and schools because the pay is greater than company work, how does that affect their feelings of fulfillment and growth? What if a dancer risks all of the stresses that are important to them only to find that the work they accepted is not up to par with what they had been expecting? Freelancing is a difficult choice because it carries such great risk and affects much more than your work-life.
 |
| Performing "La Esmeralda" at gala (Photo: Dmitri Papadakos) |
Looking at these abridged lists of stressors that can affect your career as a freelancer, it becomes quite clear that there is great push and pull in the mind of a freelance dancer. At what point does a nomad choose to find more stable living? When does the choice to live wild versus living a normal life become too overwhelming to continue? Obviously, I am not in a place to tell people what their breaking point may be, but I can at least open up this topic for discussion on this forum and let people know that it is absolutely normal to question living the gypsy life. It is in every freelance dancer's best interest to constantly assess their needs, fulfillment, and happiness in order to remain healthy, stay at the top of their game, and to live a sustainable/enjoyable lifestyle. With all of these things in consideration, the mental games that freelancing presents are much easier to understand.
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