Finding What Makes You Unique & LOFD Writes for Dance Magazine

My story on the all-new Dance Magazine website

I really can't express how grateful I am to be having a whirlwind year when it comes to opportunities and achievements. To be completely honest, I had wishes and dreams of this stuff happening in my performance career. Little did I think that I would actually find what I was looking for and more in only the first year following the end of my time onstage. Last week, I had both the honor of being featured by Dance Magazine and writing for the same periodical in one fell swoop. It has been on my goal list for a few years now to write an article for this major publication and to have my work in the studio and on the stage highlighted, as well. If you want to check out that article, you can click this link right here to be swept over to Dance Magazine's new website to read my article.

The Graduating Class of the dance department at Hunter College

I'm currently riding the Bolt Bus back from New York City to spend an evening with my husband and a night in my own bed. At the moment, I'm currently riding off the high of sharing my knowledge and experience with the graduating class in Hunter College's dance department, where we discussed marketing oneself online and in-person, how to prepare materials for auditions, and techniques in cultivating social media for self-promotion. We talked about many things throughout this 2-hour interactive workshop that I curated especially for these students embarking on their first year out on their own. One thing that we addressed that I haven't talked about in great detail anywhere is how to find what makes you unique and how to use that to stand out in a crowd. So, I thought why not discuss that right here, right now.

This concept kind of drives me nuts, but every one of us is unique. In fact, the only thing that is normal about every human being is that we are all unique. While some dancers have amazingly high leg extensions or perfectly centered pirouettes, others have artistry that really shines through and can move people to tears. But there are other aspects of self that help dancers become visible. Perhaps, its your hair color, your fashion sense, your interests offstage, or your upbringing. There are unique characteristics that we are born with and different personal experiences that we all have had that distinguish each of us from one another. While many of us try to find success through our technique and artistry, it is more common for those who rise to local, regional, national, and international attention to be singled out for their uniqueness rather than their technique. This is due to the fact that many people today have impeccable technique, sky-high extensions, and can turn on a dime. Today, people tend to be drawn to artists who are imperfect, but intriguing, relatable, or any combination of the two.

How does one find what makes them unique and then use it to their advantage onstage and offstage? This often requires a lot of trial-and-error to accomplish. For me, as a dancer, I had nice facility with very good technique and considerable acting skills. I always felt like my acting skills distinguished me from others since I didn't have incredible facility. But I was never able to gain the national or international attention I had dreamed of attaining in my work as a performing artist with my skill set. Only when I began freelancing and developed this blog had I begun to even tap into a little bit of what makes me unique in this vast, yet small dance world. I didn't realize it at the time, but what was distinctive about me as an artist was the candor and honesty that I am willing to share publicly about my work and our art form. While this has nothing to do with my dancing, it is a distinguishing quality of mine that I seemed to have naturally cultivated. It absolutely has helped me stand out in a crowd. During my performance career, this quality of mine helped me gain employment across the nation as a freelance artist and got me a few nice nods with attention from Dance Informa and a short article about health care in Dance Magazine.

I didn't have to try hard to develop this characteristic in my media and social media work, as this has always been a quality of mine since childhood. I remember sitting with a friend at the Kirov Academy of Ballet who asked me to be honest with her about what I thought of her technique. I remember her pursing her lips, letting out a short close-lipped smile, and stating, "That was mildly painful to hear, but I know that you love me and I now know what I need to work on to get where I want to." And the beautiful part of this story is that she got her dream job to dance with Universal Ballet in South Korea, where her mother had been raised. So, while I have always had this unique quality, it took freelancing and this blog for me to figure out how to use it to benefit my career.

Rose Montgomery-Webb (Photo: Unknown)

Now, let's talk for a moment about what you are really here for? How can my sharing of this story help you. How can you determine what makes you unique and utilize those qualities to help become your most successful self? The first and most obvious place is to look within yourself. I always say that you should start with your story. Where did you grow up? How did you grow up? I remember having this conversation with one of my students from Alaska Dance Theatre who is currently a trainee at Ballet Met. She was raised in Alaska, but adopted from South Korea while she was an infant. While she didn't see these aspects of her life as anything out of the ordinary (and it was beautiful to see that she didn't), in the eyes of others she was having wildly unique experiences before she even had cognizance of it. As she has entered her years of auditioning for companies and finding her way towards becoming a professional, I have always told her to own those two facts and be unafraid to openly share about these things. This has paid off in certain ways, beyond her training opportunities and gaining a scholarship to attend Ballet Met for the summer that led her to this traineeship, she was selected as a guest host for the Premier Dance Network's Becoming Ballet podcast. If you can look into your life and see and share what unique experiences made you into the person that you are today, you may be on the right track to finding your definitive story. Look at Misty Copeland and how her story has catapulted her into legitimate fame.

James Whiteside (Photo: Unknown)

There are other unique things about people that are outside of themselves and their experiences. For instance, Kansas City Ballet dancer Kelsey Hellebuyck has a hell of a knack for fashion. She runs a blog that documents her outfits from day to day, which has had her featured in Pointe Magazine and other media outlets. Kathryn Morgan had a meteoric-rise at New York City Ballet then was struck with a debilitating illness that forced her off the stage. While she already had a unique story, she has found even more ways to make herself distinctive by developing a Youtube channel that offers tips, tricks, and training for young, aspiring dancers. Margaret Mullin (Soloist with Pacific Northwest Ballet) has been working as choreographer and director on a film documentary, James Whiteside (American Ballet Theatre Principal) rose to celebrity status thanks to his viral music videos and non-apologetic openness about his lifestyle, and Abigail Mentzer (former Pennsylvania Ballet Soloist & current dancer in the Phantom of the Opera tour) has become well-known for her interest in dancewear and her company that grew from that. Aside from finding what makes themselves unique, these artists have also developed their unique passions outside of the dance studio to garner attention, likes, and an adoring audience.

I wouldn't have gotten the opportunity I had today at Hunter College and the one above with Dance Magazine if I hadn't figured out what made me unique and ran with it. It can be so frustrating for somebody to tell you that everybody and nobody is unique. And while I fully agree with that statement, we can only blossom fully when we learn how to genuinely be our own unique self. Take some time to tap into and cultivate multiple parts of yourself that you feel are distinguishing. But be sure not to get disillusioned when certain things you have worked towards and hoped for don't actually catch people's attention. Practically nobody figures out the key to success on their first try. Keep putting yourself out there, keep fine-tuning your ideas and story, and (if you are lucky) your uniqueness will help bring you to the forefront of attention onstage, offstage, and in communities around the world.

How to Write a Freelancer's Resume or CV

It has been nearly four years since I began posting here at Life of a Freelance Dancer. You would think that, at a certain point, I would run out of fresh, new topics to discuss. Strangely enough, I often find the opposite. Looking through my previous posts, I was shocked to find that I have never talked about writing a resume as a freelancer. If you have been waiting for this post, your wait is over.

The resume/CV (Curriculum Vitae) of a performing artist generally differs from one that might be constructed for work in most other fields. Many resumes are headed with either an objective, what you are looking for as a job seeker, or a general overview of your experience. Most dancers leave these items off of the top of their resume for a few reasons. First, it allows them to save space for their performing experience. Secondly, the objective of most dancers is quite clear. "I am auditioning to dance for you." If you are seeking a job working in administration, I think these details are pertinent to construct an appropriate resume. But if you are looking to join a company or perform in a professional production, I would suggest leaving these items off the top.

Keeping in mind the above information, where should you begin? Start by developing your header. The top of your resume should display your name as the largest item, usually in large, bold print. Following this should be your most personal information underneath your name in a smaller font, but still bold-faced. Be sure to include your contact information (phone number, address, & email) for the employer if they need additional information or want to offer you work. For freelancers that are seeking work beyond their local freelancing scene, I usually suggest that you add where you are based out of versus your physical address. For instance, I live in New York City and Philadelphia at the moment, so my resume states "Based out of New York City & Philadelphia." With my name centered and these items evenly spaced below, I finish off my header with a link to my personal website, which holds a wealth of additional information for any potential employer who wants a more detailed look at my experience. Additionally, include some of your physical details that are expected from applying dancers; like height, weight, hair color, eye color, and birth date.

The next section of your resume should consist of any long-term experience you have had. In bold-faced print and somewhere around size 16 font, write the words "Professional Employment" or "Professional Experience." Below that, you will go back to a regular, 12 point font. If you have held a contract with any companies or performed in an ongoing production (longer than a few months), be sure to post these in chronological order. My general experience is listed by date in general chunks of time. For instance, I danced with Pacific Northwest Ballet from 2004 - 2011 before transitioning into freelance work from 2011 - present. It isn't necessary to add the months that you worked with these companies. Just be sure to put your experience down starting with the most recent position you have held. For example, I place that I work as a freelance artist first, then PNB second. Avoid putting down company and performance experience that you have performed short-term as a freelancer, as we will include that later. Your general position should be stated as "Freelance Artist" or "Principal Guest Artist" (if you have performed as one) for the period of time you have been performing this type of work.

Next on the list, you will want to write down the roles that you have performed. A friend recently asked me for some advice on developing their resume relating to performing Corps roles more recently than Leading roles. My simple solve to this is to spread your experience out between multiple sections. Of course, if you have limited experience, you can keep this all in one section. But if you have been performing as a professional for a period of time, you often have to remove experience from your CV to keep it all fitting on one page.

For this section, begin again with a bold-faced, size 16 font with the title of "Leading Roles." By doing this, whether you have performed a leading role recently or not, this experience is at the top of your resume. Below this title, I list the name of the ballet, the role I danced, the company that I danced with, and the year that I performed this role. You have a few options of how to list these roles, but I generally put them in alphabetical order by choreographer. I also tend to use acronyms to list the companies where I performed roles, as it saves space and makes it easier to keep all of the information on one line. Throughout my resume, I will post the acronym for a company in parenthesis in my general experience area. For instance, as you can see below, under "Professional Experience" I wrote Pacific Northwest Ballet (PNB). That way the employer can reference back to the organization if they aren't familiar with the acronym.

If you wish to follow up your Leading Role experience with roles that you have performed that were either Featured, Corps, or Chorus roles, then you can follow your leading roles experience with this below. Format this section in the same way that you formatted above. At a certain point, my experience became too vast to include all of this information on my resume. So, instead, I chose to include two lists. One includes choreographers I have worked with where I originated roles (they were choreographed on me) and a separate section listing choreographers where I have danced Featured and Corps roles in their works. Beginning with the same type of header as I have executed for all of the above sections, I follow up next by evenly listing the names of all of the choreographers in alphabetical order. I also state the companies where I originated roles in works.

Following my performance experience, I finally include the list of organizations that I have worked with as a freelance dancer. I do this here because I generally worked with these organizations for shorter periods of times (usually a few days to a few months). Using the same header size and font as I have throughout, I follow up with the companies that I have freelanced with and the years that I worked with the companies. This is quite simple, evenly spaced, and neatly organized.

Finally, if you have enough space, you can include whatever you feel is best to sum up your experience. Some people choose to include quotes from printed reviews, while others leave information of references to contact. I chose to make a short list of accomplishments that I have achieved over the years and media that I have been featured in. It is really up to you to sum up your CV as you wish. If you feel that you are lacking in experience and can benefit from sharing reference information, by all means do this. If you feel that a Broadway audition may be interested in special skills that you have (acrobatics, gymnastics, etc.), put that here.

Generally, you should keep your resume down to one page. There are few instances as a performer where you should be providing potential employers with a resume beyond this. Try to print out your resume on paper that is higher quality than regular printer paper, but don't feel like you will be looked down upon if you can't manage that luxury. Today, many employers accept resumes via email or an upload button on a website. Be sure that you save your resume as a .PDF file. THIS IS A MUST!!!!! If you send your document in any other format, it is possible that there will be formatting issues when your information is uploaded. And if you are asking a company to take their precious time to look at your information, they will appreciate this. If they download your resume and it loses it's formatting, they are very unlikely to take the time to find a fix. This means that they won't read your resume and won't consider you for work.

There you have it! I have included an image of an old resume of mine below.  Please keep in mind that this is only a guideline for you to follow. Honestly, there is no perfect resume or CV. Each employer might have a different opinion on what they would like to see. Take this example that I have offered you and tweak it to work best for you. Happy Job Hunting!

My failure in designing my own website (SPECIAL OFFER INSIDE)

Lyquid Talent website design for dancers (style 5)

(Be sure to read all the way down for a SPECIAL OFFER)

Since I started freelancing, I have taken on many roles. I am no longer just a dancer dancing for my big company employer. My roles as a freelance guest artist include teacher, marketing director, video editor, negotiator, travel agent, writer, editor, social media director, choreographer and so much more. Honestly, I often surprise myself with my ability to learn something foreign to me, often with repeated failure before triumph. I enjoy a challenge and love to relish in the subsequent success. But sometimes I don't have time to figure out something that is immediately important or I absolutely can't figure out whatever task I have in front of me. This is exactly what happened when I was trying to build my website.

As a freelancer, it is important to have a handful of items to market yourself. Aside from this blog, I have business cards, a performance reel, photographs, and my resume. One important tool that I had spent years without was my own personal website. These days people spend more time on the internet than they do most other things. Taking all of my above marketing tools and putting them together in one place on the web is not only efficient, but helpful in expediting my search for work. There was only one problem. I couldn't find the time to figure out the complexities of building my own website.

My partner has always been proactive in pushing me to do things, from completing my Associate of the Arts (AA) degree during my time at PNB to throwing my Contact event for freelancers. He started his own business back in April, Spaces Transformed, and bought a website builder for his business' website. The company that he purchased his site from had a (supposedly simple) drag-and-drop editor. After he spent weeks fighting with the program, he finally created his website (while very nice, it is still very glitchy when trying to edit). A month or so after he had completed his website, he was sent an offer to buy a new domain and one year of hosting from the site. The price was too good to be true, so I reluctantly purchased my domain in the hopes that it would inspire me to finally work on my site. Following that purchase, my domain sat unused for about 4 months. I was simply throwing money down the drain. Once I finally committed to making my site, I felt entirely overwhelmed by the daunting task of understanding the ins and outs of website design. After consulting with a friend who had recently created her own site using wordpress, I quietly gave up and started working on other things to cover up my unwillingness to fight the good fight.

I strongly believe that if you put effort towards making something happen, it will come to fruition in one way or another. In the process of putting together my Contact event, I came across a new website design company, Lyquid Talent. This Chicago-based company had reached out to me a few weeks before I began planning my event. I figured why not give them a call and see if they would be interested in donating a package to be given away to a freelance dancer. I was very pleased after speaking with Jeff Serani, Lyquid Talent CEO, to find that he was greatly supportive of my event and interested in helping current and potential freelance dancers (beyond his goal to give established and aspiring professionals a web presence).

One of Lyquid Talent's media-friendly styles (style 6)

As I said before, I had been struggling with the creation of my own personal website. I also wanted to see how the company worked prior to offering their services at my event. Jeff and his team offered to show me the simple process involved in making one of their highly versatile websites by taking away the burden of creating my own site. This was quite a relief! The first thing I had to do was visit the Lyquid Talent website and choose one of their 14 designs, ranging from elegant to edgy and simple to media-friendly. There is a wide array of options that offer a variety of subtitles (resume, photo gallery, contact form, etc). If I was feeling particularly picky, there is also a certain amount of flexibility with each design. Each style has multiple options for personalizing and customizing, which can be viewed on that particular style's info page. This allows each dancer to cater a site to their specific needs. After I decided that dance website style 5 suited my taste and needs, Jeff sent me a link where I could upload all of my information for him to plug into the website. Prior to uploading, most would usually decide on a domain name, which is usually their their name followed by .com (which Lyquid Talent generously offers as a part of their package). Even though I had already purchased my domain name earlier through another site, Jeff was able to assist me in transferring it into his care. I was lucky that I had already accrued dance photos, put together my performance reels, and written my resume. All I had to do was upload each file to the secure server with a short description of the item and let the Lyquid Talent team create the magic.

One of Lyquid Talent's more artistic options (style 11)

Once Lyquid Talent had all of my data, it was only a matter of days before my site was up and running. After reviewing my site and requesting a few minor modifications, they passed the reins over to me. I was given a username and passcode to self-edit my site. After signing in to edit my page, I found that Jeff had uploaded a handful of video tutorials that easily walked me through editing each area of my site (e.g. how to edit and update my resume). At this point, I wasn't left alone to figure everything out for myself. A friend tried to connect to this blog through my website and it wasn't connecting properly. Within hours of putting in a customer service request, the Lyquid Talent team had fixed the glitch and my link was up and running again.

Now that my site, BarryKerollis.com, has been up and running for a few months, I have had time to see the many benefits in having a website. When I contact companies to let them know I am available for work, instead of uploading my resume, photos, and providing a link to my performance reel in each email, I just offer the link to my site where each of these items is cleanly organized. This saves me a great amount of time, allowing me to contact more companies. On more than one occasion, directors have complimented me on my beautiful website. I also have a calendar to tell my friends, family, and fans where I will be performing next. Lastly, there is a contact form that allows anybody that wants to reach me, whether a potential employer or fan, to get in touch with me. The benefits of my site outweigh the modest monthly cost for the company to host my site.

As I gain more experience, it becomes more apparent that I can't figure everything out on my own. Lyquid Talent came into my life at the right moment to help increase my visibility, decrease my stress level, and fill a great need. I needed help promoting myself as a freelancer dancer. For company dancers, it could be giving oneself a way of promoting their image beyond the company with which they dance. For students, audition season is quickly approaching and mailing out audition packages can be extremely expensive. With all of this in mind, Jeff and the Lyquid Talent team are allowing me to thank my dedicated readers by giving any dancer that reads my blog a special New Year's offer. From the moment this blog is posted until February 1st, 2013, Lyquid Talent is offering to create your personalized dancer website for $19.99 (88% off), plus the $15/month hosting fee. Just follow this link (SPECIAL OFFER for Life of a Freelance Dancer readers), pick your design, and sign up. Thank you and I hope that this offer will help you start your dance year off on the right foot! Happy New Year!