A video montage of SF Bay Area artist Kristin Damrow and her schedule: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-gmiSc9hHSA
Most dancers would say that they work full-time; more and more, the picture of “full-time” is not simply at one location. It is common to hear of a dancer working multiple part-time jobs as a choreographer, teaching artist, and Pilates instructor, for example.
When I say move beyond, I mean…..can we fully embrace and articulate about the multi-site job model, whether talking to young dancers or explaining to an acquaintance how we make a living?
Ultimately, whatever way you slice it, do we need to work at only one site as long as we
- Make the income level we need
- Have health benefits
- Are artistically satisfied
Six artists from around the country recently shared ideas and questions around this complicated topic, which can be frustrating, disheartening, confusing, and yet exciting and invigorating at the same time. Some of the artists who participated in the conversation are quoted here, while other ideas are synthesized within the blog post. I would like to thank Ashley Anderson (Salt Lake City), Valerie Gutwirth (Oakland, CA), Juliana Monin (Oakland, CA), Rebecca Ferrell (Urbana, IL), Alexandra Beller (New York City), and Ashley Thorndike-Youssef (Washington, DC) for contributing ideas.
From Alexandra Beller (New York, NY)
I think the question is a personal one and relates deeply to both the nervous system and our personal approach to time, space and focus. For me, the multiplicity of foci makes for a turned on brain, which allows me to think three dimensionally, which is good for my art-making. There's something about having my art (and my kids) retain my ongoing attention, and everything else gets a part-time approach that benefits my sense of myself as an artist (and mom). For me, if I had a full-time job, I worry that my art making would feel like a peripheral activity. Since I'm freelance, I'm able to schedule all of my jobs in relation to art rather than sticking my art making into the spaces where I'm not working. It's likely a similar number of hours, but it feels like art and kids are at the center of the system and money, career advancement, administration etc spoke off from the center, which is a good fit for me. Many people, though, find they can't concentrate on art if there are always so many things in their life.
From Rebecca Ferrell (Urbana, IL)
In my opinion, the “one job” model and the “multi job” model have gotten to a point where we have a legitimate choice of which one works best for us as individuals. In many ways, dance is becoming more project-based, and dancers are learning skills to be more independent and rely less upon the strength of a single resource. The days of large companies are dwindling and dancers are becoming increasingly self-sufficient, allowing them to choose the path they want, rather than choosing between income or artistic integrity.
Before I came to the University of Illinois, I was a dance educator, choreographer, performer, arts administrator, curator, and critic, but I was responsible to up to ten different individual jobs at any given time. The benefit of having a “university gig” is that I am still all of those things, but it’s centralized. I have an office, a community of colleagues, a sense of structure, and a steady income- but I haven’t sacrificed any variety, freedom, independence, or artistry. If anything, my opportunities and connections in the dance field have grown by being part of Dance at Illinois.
From Valerie Gutwirth (Oakland, CA)
In the US, artistic satisfaction can come first only if those other needs are met, so the trick as far as I see it is to start at the bottom and build up. Mostly that means not just working multiple sites, but multiple job descriptions: the money-and-benefits job, the dance job that may not suit us completely artistically but pays some, and the thing that makes your soul sing, the thing you’d do even if you had to pay for it. I also think that "artistically satisfied" changes over time and life stages. For me it meant dancing full time in my 20s, supporting my family in my 30s, reconnecting with my dancer self in my 40s, and doing whatever feels good and possible plus mentoring/big-picturing in my 50s.
Are you developing a retirement fund on your own? How are you planning for retirement? I’m lucky to have retirement funds in several places, all because one (non-dance) employer, who I no longer work for, started a fund way back in the early 90s. I kept contributing to it and to another IRA until I landed in my current public-school dance teacher role, and now I get the state pension system. And because my partner makes more than I do, I can also contribute to a 403(b) plan through work.
Are you okay with this multi-site job model, or do you still seek a position at one place? Why or why not? Because I was able to go to grad school and be credentialed so I could teach in the public system, I had the opportunity to make a real-life-supporting, benefitted wage teaching dance. So my multi-place work usually happens because each thing adds to the glory of the whole picture.
About MFA programs and whether they should (or can) lead to full-time professor positions in current times: I think you can get advanced degrees for a couple of reasons: to further your career in terms of employability, salary scale, range, or to expand your understanding of the field. For the latter, you have to have another source of income. There are not enough dance professor jobs for everyone getting an MFA (or even a PhD) to be employable in the field.
From Juliana Monin (Oakland, CA)
I’ve been dancing professionally in some capacity for the last 14 years or so, and I don’t think I’ve ever met a dancer with one job. Even when I danced “full-time” for a company (full-time due to the schedule demands of rehearsals and touring), we all needed to hustle with fitting in other work to make ends meet. I think for a lot of people the one job model is not only unrealistic, but also insufficient to fulfill our artistic needs. Even those with great full-time teaching or arts administrative jobs often look for dance projects outside of their regular work because their work does not provide these opportunities. For me, having a variety of work works. All of my work endeavors challenge and feed me in different ways, and each of these realms informs and enhances what I am doing in the others. That said, I am very lucky in that I do have a main job, teaching dance part-time at a high school, which provides the bulk of my income in addition to providing health and retirement benefits. By having this security, I have been able to fill in my schedule with other teaching jobs and dance jobs that are meaningful for me.
On a side note, I have noticed that now that most of my income comes from teaching as opposed to dancing, my self-identification has also shifted. I no longer introduce myself as a dancer, but as a dance teacher, and would feel fraudulent if I announced myself as a dancer these days. Is this part of the problem too? If we start to accept a multi-job model as the norm for dance artists, then will we be better able to embrace the idea that dancers do more than just dance?
Blog Series: My Dance Week
Since February 2014, I have run a column on the blog called "My Dance Week." Once a month, I ask a dancer to literally sketch out, write out, or create a video montage about his/her week. The goal of "My Dance Week" is to highlight this very topic – what a life as a dancer looks like and entails. Check out the column to view many examples of dancers who have multiple jobs as well as dancers with one position at a school or within a dance company.
The Topic of Retirement
Saving for retirement emerged within this conversation multiple times. Many artists are relying on their partner's retirement savings; others shared that they are personally saving, but simply not enough at this time.
To find out more about retirement planning options while working at multiple sites, please read more here.
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Related posts:
Multiple Pathways: Highlighting 10 Dancers with Tenure
Continuing the Dialogue around MFA Programs in the United States
How many MFA programs are in the United States right now?
Artist Profile: Alexandra Beller
Artist Profile: Valerie Gutwirth
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Life as a Modern Dancer 
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