Ian Macmillan Posted July 25, 2015 Share Posted July 25, 2015 This article from The Stage may not come as a surprise to everyone, but anyone considering a career through Dance might like to have an inkling of what may lie ahead: https://www.thestage.co.uk/news/2015/professional-dancers-earn-less-5k-year/?utm_content=buffer78982&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lisa O`Brien Posted July 25, 2015 Share Posted July 25, 2015 How depressing. 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
taxi4ballet Posted July 26, 2015 Share Posted July 26, 2015 Oh well, at least they won't have to pay their student loans back! 6 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
annaliesey Posted July 26, 2015 Share Posted July 26, 2015 that's pretty grim really isn't it Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Melody Posted July 26, 2015 Share Posted July 26, 2015 (edited) Gosh, after all those years of training, too. I wonder how incomes break down among the different types of dance. Edited July 26, 2015 by Melody 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Katymac Posted July 26, 2015 Share Posted July 26, 2015 I wonder how the DaDA funded dancers stood up against the non funded ones.......as well as the different types of dance & actually it doesn't specifically say that the dancers were trained dancer......just that they were dancing professionally, unless I read it wrong Does anyone have access to the actual survey results, I worry about stats without reading the actual survey & it's constraints 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John Mallinson Posted July 26, 2015 Share Posted July 26, 2015 Does anyone have access to the actual survey results, I worry about stats without reading the actual survey & it's constraints I agree. There's so little information in this piece about the way the study was conducted and so little detail of the results that it's difficult to get a feel for the dancers' real situation. 4 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lilacfairy Posted July 26, 2015 Share Posted July 26, 2015 I wish I hadn' t read that ! 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Katymac Posted July 26, 2015 Share Posted July 26, 2015 Some of DD's 'friends' on Facebook are 'professional dancers' with barely any training, no vocational training at all & they do fetes/holiday camps for drinking money - so let's hope some of them were surveyed 4 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cara in NZ Posted July 26, 2015 Share Posted July 26, 2015 I have the terrible urge to suggest some are working in nightclubs and have 'other sources of income' 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Yorkshire Pud Posted July 26, 2015 Share Posted July 26, 2015 I keep telling my dd this. There are hardly any dancing jobs available compared to the number of dancers hoping to earn a living from a full time dancing career, especially for girls. The odds are that the amounts she can earn in the future as a dancer will probably never pay back the cost of her dance training. Will she be put off? Of course not!!! I'm actually quite proud of her for being so determined and for working so hard at something. So let's just hope she might be one of the very lucky ones who end up in a dance related career somewhere. 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lisa O`Brien Posted July 26, 2015 Share Posted July 26, 2015 I keep telling my dd this. There are hardly any dancing jobs available compared to the number of dancers hoping to earn a living from a full time dancing career, especially for girls. The odds are that the amounts she can earn in the future as a dancer will probably never pay back the cost of her dance training. Will she be put off? Of course not!!! I'm actually quite proud of her for being so determined and for working so hard at something. So let's just hope she might be one of the very lucky ones who end up in a dance related career somewhere. I think the key thing in this day and age is to try and do as well as you possibly can with your academic work as well. Easier said than done,of course. But the hardest thing to do [believe me,I know] is having to return to education once a dance career is finished. With all the other issues such as family commitments,finances,etc,it really is wise to at least get good GCSE`s from the offset,so they will never have to be repeated again. It will make life so much easier going on to Further or Higher education with that good foundation in academic achievement of GCSE`s behind you. This is what I emphasised at my non-dancing son. Get your GCSE`s done and completed to a high enough standard first time around. That way,they will never have to be repeated again and you can effectively forget all about them. 8 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
taxi4ballet Posted July 26, 2015 Share Posted July 26, 2015 I wonder how the DaDA funded dancers stood up against the non funded ones.......as well as the different types of dance & actually it doesn't specifically say that the dancers were trained dancer......just that they were dancing professionally, unless I read it wrong Does anyone have access to the actual survey results, I worry about stats without reading the actual survey & it's constraints I'm inclined to think you've hit the nail on the head here - it would depend on where they trained (and to what level). Pretty much every local college in the country offers courses in various performing arts. Perhaps they don't always make it clear to their students that they will have a hard time getting professional work when they are up against people who trained at the top performing arts schools and colleges like Laines & Bird etc; and the top dance schools. 5 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lisa O`Brien Posted July 26, 2015 Share Posted July 26, 2015 (edited) Just joined The Stage online so I could read it. Clicked on the link to the Equity report,and it was for Equity members.Also it said nothing[in that report] that it was just for dancers. The piece said a website called Dancers Pro conducted the research,but from what I can gather,not that many people responded to it. Edited July 26, 2015 by Lisa O`Brien 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
invisiblecircus Posted July 26, 2015 Share Posted July 26, 2015 There are many contemporary dancers about with portfolio careers who are earning money from choreographing, teaching and dance development as well as performing. Some of these may well be getting less than £5000 a year from actual performing (which is what the survey is referring too) but are earning a decent annual salary from other dance work. Then there are those in commercial theatre who may have a full time contract for a particular show but if they haven't successfully auditioned for something else by the time that contract ends, they're likely to take non dance related jobs to fill the gaps. The situation is the same for backing dancers etc. It's really only ballet dancers in major companies who are getting full time, year round contracts. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
taxi4ballet Posted July 26, 2015 Share Posted July 26, 2015 Sometimes though, surveys need to be taken with a pinch of salt as the people most likely to respond are the ones most affected (in one way or other) by the questions posed, and this will naturally have an effect on the results. I seem to remember a questionnaire a few years ago in a womens' magazine about sexual discrimination in the workplace. The results stated that almost all women had suffered discrimination; but then it dawned on somebody that in the main it had only been those affected who had actually bothered to do the questionnaire and send it off. 6 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dance*is*life Posted July 26, 2015 Share Posted July 26, 2015 It also depends on how a question is phrased as to what answer you'll get. We see that all the time in interviews on TV chat shows and trials of course. It's the glass half full or half empty syndrome! 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Melody Posted July 26, 2015 Share Posted July 26, 2015 (edited) In The Agony and The Ecstasy, that three-parter about ENB, one of the dancers mentioned that some of them supplemented their income by dancing in night clubs (or strip clubs, not sure how explicit she was being). But without going back to find it, I don't remember if that was about dancers with full-time contracts or if she was talking about the freelancers who were being brought in to beef up the numbers for the Swan Lake in-the-round performance. Edited July 26, 2015 by Melody Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JulieW Posted July 27, 2015 Share Posted July 27, 2015 I remember that Melody. But I think it was the freelance dancers as you suggested. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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