We attend audition after audition and accept rejection after rejection.
We are told every day at class that we aren’t good enough, even if we are. Dancing requires talent, artistry and athleticism, traits that not everyone possesses. But that doesn’t mean we didn’t have a career already. Some of us probably did want to get Broadway, and some of us do go on to go to university and follow a different career path one day.
#Applause dancewear professional
‘Do you all hope to get Broadway someday?’ (Like Broadway was the only place you could find professional dancers), ‘Are you going to go back to university and find a career after this?’. ‘So what do you plan to do professionally?’. You start to wonder, does everyone in the audience feel this way? Are we all a joke to them? And you would get those inane comments from the audience sometimes. We, and our wonderful parents, sacrifice so much so we can do what we love, and we are so excited when someone finally gives us a professional gig, that it is literally heartbreaking when someone makes a throwaway comment about the credibility of your career. You don’t give up friend’s birthday parties, trips to the cinema and your entire school holidays growing up to become a waiter. You don’t train five hours a night (and more on weekends) every day of your life since the age of 2 or 3 sometimes to become a bartender. And there is no way they could have done ours. But what no one ever seemed to understand, was that we could have done their job too. On the surface, sure, we worked less hours than the bar staff did. You have no idea what a real job is like.’ They literally had no idea of how much work a dancer has put in for the duration of their ENTIRE LIFE to get to a point where they can have some days off and dance for a few hours each evening. I spent many years dancing on cruise ships, and it always seemed so ironic to me that a waiter or bartender would say, ‘You dancers barely work at all. And you would think that people might be more open minded, right? For the most part, sadly, no. Whilst many aspects of these shows and movies glamourize the industry and put a major emphasis on people’s backgrounds and ‘sob stories’, at least the average person gets to see more of this art form that so many of us love. This exposure hasn’t done much to improve our pay conditions or our working rights, but with the amount of dancers showing up at auditions these days, it certainly seems to have inspired more people to pursue dancing as a career. It can be incredibly disheartening to perform your heart out on stage, only to be asked the next day at a backstage tour – “So when are you going to get a real job?”.ĭancing is an art form that has seen increased media interest in the last few years thanks to programmes like ‘So You Think you Can Dance’ and movies like ‘Step Up’. As a former professional dancer there have been numerous occasions when I have had to defend my career choice to the narrow-minded, the ignorant, or the misinformed.
0 kommentar(er)
