This is a book about dancers’ careers. I am not focusing on performances or styles of dance but on dancers’ work careers. It is about the fascination with dancing that brought gifted strivers to the stage, the dedication and grit that sustained them through the years of rigorous training, the artistic sensibilities and ambition that kept their dance careers going, and the adjustments they make after transitioning to the post-performance phase in their life cycle. They face many challenges. Unlike professional athletes who often earn large salaries, only a tiny handful of very famous dancers make enough money to live on and save. But both dancers and athletes must retire when the body can no longer do what it must. And unlike other artists whose careers can persist over many decades as they chase recognition, dancers have only a short time to do so. Most stop performing between the ages of thirty and forty.
Many dance books are autobiographies, biographies, or interviews with well-known dancers and choreographers. All are names dance fans easily recognize: Rudolf Nureyev, Margot Fonteyn, George Balanchine, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Jacques d’Amboise, Gelsey Kirkland, Jerome Robbins, Allegra Kent, Suzanne Farrell, Edward Villella, Merrill Ashley, Mark Morris, Martha Graham, Merce Cunningham, Twyla Tharp, La Nijinska, Alexei Ratmansky, and Patricia Wilde, among others. Collections of interviews by John Gruen, Barbara Newman, Joysanne Sidimus, and Nancy Upper tell us more about the lives of largely well-known dancers.1 Some recent autobiographies are narratives of difference and fighting the odds, racially (Misty Copeland and Michaela DePrince) or recovering from injury (David Hallberg). The status of this roster is similar to that of all-star baseball players or those elected to the hall of fame.
Some write about performances, but as a visual art, it is difficult to describe performances using only words. I would love to be able to describe movement when I see dance. I am having difficulty even describing a rond de jambe, a single ballet movement, but I can show you. It won’t look good when I do it, but you will have a better idea than what I can describe. David Hallberg’s wonderful account of his life as a principal dancer describes a tour jeté as “a leap into the air springing off one foot, then executing a half turn and landing on the opposite leg.”2 I doubt most people who have not taken ballet or seen this movement could execute it from a description alone. Alastair Macaulay, the former senior dance critic for the New York Times who writes eloquently about dance, when giving a lecture before several hundred people, bouréed out from behind the podium to illustrate a point. It is an art form requiring serious training of the body that communicates a story, relationships, emotions, or intricate patterns through movement, rarely words. I turn to dance writers and critics to describe dance performances. Few can write about dance and the feelings one gets while dancing better than Alma Guillermoprieto in Samba and Dancing with Cuba, and Marina Harss’s biography of Ratmansky and description of his dances encouraged me to reexamine his choreography. All taught me much about dance, dance performances, and dance history, but live performances are required to see what dance is really about; film tends to make everything look flat, or you miss something while the camera is on someone’s face. You can’t hear the dancers breathing on film.
Few books investigate the lives of the dedicated dancers outside of the very elite circles except for Toni Bentley’s Winter Season, a corps de ballet member in the early 1980s of the New York City Ballet (NYCB) and Barbara Milberg Fisher’s In Balanchine’s Company, an early soloist with the NYCB who became a professor of English. In 2003 Bentley wrote in the new preface to her book, “Dancers didn’t write unless they were stars—only then did they have a story worth telling, the story of success.”3 I think that she and other corps de ballet members who mostly dance the ensemble work have stories worth telling as, without a strong corps, classical dance suffers.4 Dancers in smaller companies and project-based groups create memorable evenings of dance and lead different lifestyles than members of large companies. They often dance with several groups and also need to find additional paying work. They put together portfolios of work; hence I refer to them as “portfolio dancers.”5 Their struggles are worth telling.
Life is different for the corps de ballet and for most portfolio dancers who perform before small audiences. It is not the life of the principals of major companies who appear from behind the closed curtain to bow again, hear the roar of the crowd, and receive flowers. I remember an American Ballet Theatre (ABT) performance when Angel Corella, who was later appointed artistic director of the Philadelphia Ballet in 2014, danced Ali, in Le Corsaire. After the performance, a group of young ballet students (in the language of today—bunheads) sitting in the orchestra section rushed toward the stage throwing flowers when he took his bow. I felt like we were attending a rock concert. Wendy Whelan, after thirty years with the NYCB, continued to perform for contemporary choreographers and as a solo dancer for two evenings at the Joyce Theater in October 2019. She had already been appointed associate artistic director of NYCB.
This doesn’t happen for the corps de ballet, even in our biggest companies, who tend to dance in large groups and are the lowest rank. Most are unknown except to a few balletomanes (regulars) who attend many performances and sit in the first rows. It is difficult to identify most corps members, certainly not when wearing wigs or swan feathers. These are classical or neoclassical ballet dancers. Small company members, often contemporary dancers, perform most often before smaller audiences and are known largely by other dancers and stalwart dance fans. I am on their email lists now, so I learn where they perform. But times are changing, and the less-than-famous often speak out too. Although their pictures are not in the program, photos and often videos of the corps de ballet in large companies and small-company or project-based dancers are available on social media. There you can find a curated self—dancing and doing a variety of activities outside the theater.
Passionate Work is about dancers who didn’t become stars. Some decided not to become professionals, and others stayed committed to professional performing using their savvy and hard-won skills to secure a place in the concert dance world in a corps de ballet but rarely made it further, or danced in the world of small companies and projects where taking on extra work is necessary to survive economically. They all remain passionate and continue a meaningful existence.
Readers may wonder how I became interested in such a project. Although I am not a dancer, I have been a hobbyist for many years—modern as a kid (Mary Wigman–modern style through classes with Jan Veen) and in college (more Wigman with Hellmut Gottschild and some Graham).6 Then I skipped many years while I was a graduate student and assistant professor of sociology—too much to do. When I received tenure, I started to breathe again and looked around for some modern classes. I found none locally, but there was an excellent ballet studio a few blocks away that produced several professional dancers and had adult classes for the hobbyists. Thank you, Jamie Jamieson. I moved to New York, and one of the first things I did was locate a ballet studio that welcomed hobbyists. Cheers to you, Andrei Kulyk and Stephanie Godino for creating a wonderful community of hobbyists. I love watching professionals, but I never wanted to take up space with them in the room. Then came COVID-19 and classes were online, and no one could see my efforts. Complicated center combinations or across the floor were limited as many were dancing in New York City apartments. Gabrielle Lamb and the NYCommunity Ballet teachers—I am forever in your debt. And thank you Jennifer Homans, John Michael Schert, and the Center for Ballet and the Arts at New York University for suggesting I take on a dance project.
To understand the careers of dancers into and out of performing, I spoke with eighty-seven dancers. We talked about their first experiences with dance, their families, their important decisions, their years as professional dancers, and their decisions to stop performing and transition to new work. Most began with intensive ballet training even before they were teens, especially the women. Some exited after high school, others continued dancing in college, and still others tried out for companies, some successfully, without attending college. Others moved in and out of performing. Some made it to major companies, but few made it beyond the corps de ballet of those companies. Many danced in the small company and project market, using their energies to locate and create ways to perform and eat. Dancers make decisions about taking paths that shape their performing careers. Sometimes decisions are made for them by people in control of organizations. Some have more choices than others, not only because of skill and artistry, but because of their bodies and prior decisions about training.
The dancers I spoke with do not represent all, or even most, dancers as I did not include Las Vegas style, tap, folkloric, backup dancers for popular music videos, or hip-hop dancers.7 With a small number of dancers that is impossible, but I have worked to generate as diverse a sample of concert dancers (not for profit) as possible. Almost all started with a serious commitment to ballet classes, but those who became professionals did many styles of dance from classical or neoclassical ballet to contemporary with pointe shoes, with socks, or barefoot. A few called themselves “experimental” dancers. Some danced in Broadway musicals, but that wasn’t their first choice. Some were just starting out, while others had stopped performing long ago. They ranged in age from twenty to people in their eighties. Sixty-three were women and twenty-four were men, reflecting most estimates of the gender balance in dance. When I spoke with them, fourteen had decided not to follow a career in dance, ten were dancing in or had recently left major companies, thirty were creating portfolios, five danced on Broadway, and twenty-eight were pursuing a new occupation after performing. Despite my efforts to designate what they were doing when interviewed (between 2016 and 2019), some changed course several times since then. Collectively, their experiences and the decisions they made are the focus of this book.8
I used a process to find these dancers that in sociology we call a “snowball sample.” I started in many places: schools and studios of dance, dancers at choreographers’ showings at the Center for Ballet and the Arts (CBA) at New York University, dancers I spotted at events around New York City, friends of friends and my students, and participants at Career Transition for Dancers, which helps dancers transition from performing. I asked each dancer to recommend others. Most danced, trained, or retired in New York City, but not all. During the years I worked on this project I attended many performances—from those by the major companies to performances by small groups in Brooklyn and Queens, in lofts and in former factories, in studio spaces, in small theaters that I hadn’t known existed, in parks and on sidewalks, in hotel lobbies, in parking lots, and even in rooftop gardens. I also had opportunities to watch choreographers create new dances and rehearse. I often spent time with dancers after performances, when I saw them in class or after rehearsals.
I have given pseudonyms to all the dancers I spoke with and will not refer to the companies with which they danced by name. When I have attended a public performance or am quoting from a public source, I use the real name of the person or company. I refer to companies as “major ballet companies” if they have at least forty dancers and long seasons, and then “major contemporary companies” that tend to be smaller, mostly under twenty dancers, except Alvin Ailey, which has about thirty dancers. The smaller ballet companies I have referred to as “small ballet companies” though some have only slightly fewer than forty dancers and some have national reputations. Many tiny companies, especially of contemporary dancers, dot the landscape of the dance world too. They have shorter seasons, some travel, and many of their dancers perform in projects too. Some project-based companies perform just a few weekends a year. Think of it as a continuum from large to small and classical ballet to barefoot contemporary. The landscape of “companies” keeps evolving. Each state has its own mix, but New York City has the largest number of dancers in the country and is the only city with two large ballet companies with training schools, many smaller contemporary and ballet companies (several with training programs), a conservatory, and several college dance programs.
COVID-19 changed much about the dance world and affected me and some of what I had begun to write. The arts community along with most other businesses and organizations moved online in March and April 2020. Many arts organizations showed older films on internet sites, providing hours of viewing for those sheltering in place.
Portfolio dancers went from low income to zero income overnight in March 2020. Some stepped up immediately with dance classes on Zoom for which they were asking five dollars, if you could afford it. I began to take six classes a week. They were serious classes, not for beginners. The community of dancers started to join in from across the country and around the world. They taught from kitchens and living rooms and some danced in bedrooms. Sometimes ten people Zoomed for a class but other times as many as fifty. All worried about flooring and what dancers would have to do to ensure that they had enough space to dance. By the end of March, most teachers had figured out the best place to stand relative to their computers or phones in order to demonstrate, and how to run their music and talk over it, giving the class instructions. In more than one instance, the internet malfunctioned. By the sixth week of sheltering in place, I suspected we would be on Zoom for a while. When rehearsals and performances could recommence was the question. Zoom classes were keeping me sane.
In May and June 2020, I was still taking Zoom classes, up to eight a week, and watching with great interest the videos being created by dancers and dance companies around the world. I particularly liked the Paris Opera Ballet’s video of dancers at home, dancing with pets, children, and in great Paris apartments. It made me laugh happily. The Guggenheim’s Works & Process series had commissioned short individual dance videos, many filmed with cellphone cameras of dancers alone at home or in city parks. I watched them immediately when a new one arrived in my inbox. I loved the films of ballets released by NYCB, Dance Theatre of Harlem (DTH), and American Ballet Theatre (ABT). And New York City Center’s videos of coaching by prominent former dancers were among my favorites along with those coached by Christopher Saunders of the Royal Ballet.
By July and August 2020, everyone was itching to get back into the studio so we could move. I was tired of hitting my toe on the sofa bed on one side and the chair on the other. My desk chair was getting worn from facing the computer screen and use as my barre. I discovered my body couldn’t really do eight classes a week.
But the dancers wanted to perform—they really wanted to. Some choreographers were working on Zoom with their dancers, creating and performing in New York City’s parks with masks and separated by six feet. I caught Barry Kerollis’s Movement Headquarters group in Washington Square Park rehearsing in sneakers and trying out several locations. They estimated how the dance had to change in the different sections of the park.
I also saw Gabrielle Lamb’s Pigeonwing Dance in Madison Square Park performing on her five by eight rug, which she toted around the city on the subway, along with the squishy underflooring she used to save hers and the four dancers’ knees and hips as they danced barefoot. They wore matching flip-flops while awaiting turns to perform on the rug. At the end of each solo, they communicated, at a distance and masked, with the next dancer. Lamb used four different music types with the four performances they danced in each site. The music changed the quality of the movements. People stopped, engrossed by the organic movement and the interesting ways the Pigeonwing dancers were able to move their bodies—no jumps, but twists of arms and legs, long-legged extensions, and upside-down stances. Very mobile joints and straight long legs with pointed arched feet were required, as was the ability to improvise.
The audience was varied in each park and performance of the Pigeonwing dancers; two park workers stayed for an entire performance, several older women pushing carriages watched, turning the carriages so that children could see. One father held his son, about three years old, on the low side wall of the circular well (a dry fountain) where they danced. The child looked mesmerized and cried when the dancers ended their performance. Two small girls of about seven or eight tried to move as the dancers did. One had amazing ability to shape her body. Another child escaped her mother’s arms and ran to the rug and started dancing. She protested as she was moved away. Several people posted contributions to the Venmo site (the only source of income), and one posted a photo on Instagram before Pigeonwing packed up as it was getting dark. Pigeonwing continued its twice a week rotation through New York City parks until the end of September 2020. But they did not make enough from the Venmo contributions to cover the small fee Gabrielle Lamb (choreographer) paid for the four dancers.
Another project-based contemporary group, Konverjdans, had two creative performances, one on a rooftop (with live music) with a few on-site observers and a live YouTube feed. Earlier, they gave a live performance on Zoom with film, live dancing, and music. It almost felt like being in a real audience with others. Everyone used “chat” to congratulate the dancers. Dancers were beginning to figure out things that they could do with film that they couldn’t do in a live performance, such as looking as though they are walking on the wall of a room. Several ABT dancers, some from the corps, shot short films with stories, as well as dancing. College dance programs were trying to adapt, and choreographers not only had to choreograph for them on Zoom but teach the students how to film themselves. Kaatsbaan, an estate in upstate New York, had weekend performances outdoors: new works, dancers from different groups, and dances created by and for people quarantining together. It was a beautiful evening for those lucky enough to snag one of the fifty seats.
By winter 2020–21, the sadness was turning into nervousness as fundraising took on a pleading tone. Companies, large and small, sought contributions to enable them to do new films of bits of the Nutcracker. Some had versions from past years. Dance Theatre of Harlem created some scenes using Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn’s version of Tchaikovsky. The jazz score and choreography lifted my spirits.
Winter to spring of 2021 I would describe as desperation. Some dancers had returned to New York City, and I saw fewer in classes. Claudia Schreier created a wonderful dance for the Miami City Ballet and another for Dance Theatre of Harlem on Zoom. The big companies were producing work for film, some of which I really enjoyed. But they still weren’t live performances. Some studios had a few masked students in class and the rest on Zoom. Several companies were dancing upstate with strict protocols. “Ballet bubble” was a new concept that allowed them to work together safely.
In summer 2021, we had more live performances outdoors! Predicting rain became an important skill. Gabrielle Lamb’s Pigeonwing dancers performed The Carpet Series in twenty-nine locations around the city. In one venue, they performed in an art center’s parking lot in Long Island City. They danced on a raised platform between two shipping containers, which served as dressing rooms. A 1950s pickup truck was pulled up to the side of the stage in front of one shipping container. The violinist played Bach while standing on the back of the truck. The evening was totally cool. The rug fit nicely on the stage. Typically, in parks, when the dancers finished their sections, they moved to the side, blending in with the audience. Here, they could not and had to stand on the side of the raised stage, fully exposed. They looked a bit uncomfortable. The raised stage required some new choreography.
In October 2021 we had seasons for the vaccinated and masked! You could feel the energy of the dancers and audiences. But by December 2021, Broadway shows were closing, and some Nutcracker performances were canceled.
Although COVID-19 has petered out as central to our health concerns, the audiences have been slow to return, though our hobbyist classes are maskless and seem full. The Pigeonwing dancers are performing on a larger rug outdoors around the city for the third and fourth summer. Many of the dancers shouldered through the long period of no performances and returned to New York as the companies tried cautiously to restart classes and performances. Others retired and started working toward new careers. Many of the performance arts are still suffering from less funding and lower attendance as of this writing.
I would like to thank my sociology friends who have read sections of this manuscript; Lynn Chancer, Dan Cornfield, Paul DiMaggio, Kathleen Gerson, Lynne Haney, Ann Morning, Dmitri Shalin, Michaela Soyer, and Iddo Tavory. Lynn Garafola, chair of the Columbia University seminar “Studies in Dance,” invited me to attend, and I have learned much about dance from the interesting and knowledgeable participants. Martha Coe provided useful comments on the manuscript as did Marie Peterson, a former honors student at New York University. My nieces—Sarah (special collections librarian) and Rachel (archeologist)—frequently received entire rundowns of what I was learning about dance and dancers and never complained, as they too are dance enthusiasts and hobbyists. My dance hobbyist buddies—Gigi Abrantes, Ava Dawson, Vanessa Dimapilis, Hirono Ota, and Beverly Winikoff—are owed a special thanks along with our ballet teacher, Stephanie Godino. Marcela Maxfield and her team at Stanford University Press, especially my copy editor Jennifer Gordon, have made excellent suggestions as they shepherd this manuscript through the publication process. Most important are the many dancers with whom I spoke who shared their stories.
1. Gruen 1975, 1988; Newman 1992, 2014; Sidimus 1987; Upper 2004.
2. Hallberg 2017: 244.
3. Bentley 2003: vii; Bentley was writing about her experience in the late 1970s, early 1980s. See also Milberg Fisher 2006.
4. Several books focus on a particular company at a specific time: Neale 1982 (American Ballet Theatre and New York City Ballet); Temin 2009 (Boston Ballet); Mazo 1974 (New York City Ballet); Stevens 1976 (American Ballet Theatre); Wulff 1998 (a study of the “backstage” of four international ballet companies and the only academic book—anthropology—in this group).
5. Handy 1989. Cohen and Mallon (1999) further specified this concept.
6. Jan Veen and Hellmut Gottschild brought Mary Wigman (German, 1886–1973) modern dance to the United States.
7. For an excellent discussion of what is dance across cultures and types, see Hanna (1987).
8. The quotes that I use in the book have been lightly edited for clarity and brevity.
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