I was thinking about these questions my entire ballet career (and beyond). I’ll try to share briefly here.
I took the attitude that the primary purpose of dancing is to get to dance all day every day. Some people just need that, at least for a portion of our lives, and I am one of them. Through the entire process I avoided over-investing, i.e. putting myself into it in a way I would feel “cheated” if my professional aspirations and/or career ended tomorrow. And I made sure to always have other good things in my life. When my full-time ballet career ended, I walked right into another profession without even missing a week of work.
I value my ballet education, and I will never regret the time I spent in the studio as a student and also company dancer. Ballet didn’t get more or less enjoyable as I developed skills; but in hindsight I feel life overall is more enjoyable to wake up every day and live in a fully trained body. By comparison, most adults are barely aware of what their limbs are doing. The training and effort and time taken away from other things was all worth it for me.
We need to consider the endeavor of professional theater dance in its broader social context, asking questions like “what purpose does this dance organization serve in our society,” “what values does it embody through its actions,” “why to people come to watch and/or give money,” etc. And once we’ve identified the role a ballet organization plays, we must ask ourselves as dancers, and whether we want to use our life and career supporting those values?
Too many ballet organizations, and the shows they produce, are structured after a 19th century imperial European model that might not be appropriate for the time and place we live in today. This is a conversation modern dance pioneers began 100 years ago in America and Germany, and it is something every ballet professional needs to think deeply about as well. Ballet trianing in the 19th century was rare, so you needed to project to the largest possible number of audience in enormous theaters. Ballet training today is much more common and much better, we should make use of that opportunity. Everyone — dancers and the public — would be better served with larger numbers of dancers hired in smaller companies performing for smaller audiences in more intimate spaces. My favorite dance series in New York City is the Joyce Theatre, with about 300 seats… what I see there is far more interesting and varied than what the big ballet companies put out on a MUCH larger budget.
We need to re-think the cult of “the best,” which is really used as a status symbol of the wealthy. (I need “the best” builder and “the best” architect and “the best” marble in my bathroom, and I neeed to patronize “the best” ballet company in my city). Although nobody wants to see amateur schlock, the social value of a dance performance is not directly tied to the skill level of the dancers. What if professional dance companies were more part-time, with maybe not “the best ever” dancers, and those dancers had more opportunity to pursue other avenues in life. That is a more dancer-centered approach. When we watch dance what we really want to see is “authenticity,” and also dancers not dancing beyond their technique. A great choreographer can make that magic happen with dancers at any level of training. Along the way, we would get more employment for dance directors and choreographers, who exist as important members of their local communities.
Yes entrpreneural creativity is needed. But that needs to come from dance leaders, fundraisers and directors who create more humane / culturally sensitive dance organizations and work with the general public and sponsors to encourage participation in these models. That is where the change has to come from. Not a 23-year old posting fouettee videos on TikTok. The reality is, ballet requires a corporate effort.
Dancers also need to think creatively about how we can function as leaders in our communities. Ballet technique is incredible, our bodies are incredible, and we are fortunate enough to have studied and understand and develop those things to a high degree. People inherently like to watch dance, and inherently enjoy building awareness of their own bodies through movement. And we are the people who hold the keys to those experiences. The reality is, most of us will not be able to make a living doing that, but it is still an important thing we can share with others in a professional manner.
After 20 years of building a family, I am re-building an identity as a dance professional, looking for creative ways to use my dance training. I have ended up diving into training in figure artwork, a form of figure skating training and movement language that was abandoned by the mainstream sport 30 years ago because it was “too difficult.” It is a privilege to embody an endangered technique / movement language and be able to share it for the next generation. Most figure skaters see themselves as participating in a sport, and they have no experience with many of the basic things about performing arts that we take for granted as dance artists. In contrast to ballet, figure skating is organized around amateur participation, which has its pros and cons. On the pro side, there are more opportunities to participate meaningfully in a less-than-full-time professional way. On the con side, the world is full of skaters who have no idea how bad they look, and don’t understand that just LANDING a jump without falling is only the start, but they repeatedly interrupt their training to attend “little league” competitions (where they win medals because the overall standards are so low). Sometimes it can seem like a nationwide / worldwide recital / Dolly Dinkle school.
But figure skating is also full of adult students who are open and receptive to serious instruction on how they might train their bodies carefully; and apart from the structure of sports governing bodies and rules and competitions, at the core most of them want to dance and move their bodies in beautiful ways to music. This is fertile ground to make contributions, as there are only a handful of people who call themselves Skating Artists and have the background to share what art means to others who want to learn. That is just one example of how we, as dance professionals, can be “entrepreneurial” and creative even as individuals.