Humans of the Dance World

  “I started dancing when I was 3. I grew up doing competitions and all styles, and I knew pretty early on when I was young that I wanted to be a dancer. It’s not really until high school that you have to decide if you want to commit yourself to it as a career. I guess it was in high school that I started taking it really seriously and going to additional classes in Philadelphia to further develop my training. I visited SMU (Southern Methodist University) my junior year of high school. I was looking at a few other schools, like NYU and Fordham, but I loved SMU’s campus and also their ability to double major, and that was really something I wanted so I could do dance and another major of my choice. We know that dance careers don’t last forever, so that allowed me to do both things. So I ended up going to SMU and majored in dance performance and political science. It was a really intense program but it was amazing. We had class every day, usually like 3 or so dance classes a day, and then we had rehearsal every week night from 5:30 to 9:30. So it was really intense but there were a lot of opportunities to do shows and choreograph dances yourself. I graduated in 2019.”

“It’s really hard to pursue a dance career. After I graduated in 2019, I moved to New York. I didn’t have a job or anything lined up, but I had done a couple of auditions because I was really moving here to try to pursue dance. I knew I would have to work kind of part time, odd-hour jobs to make it work. I lived on my friend’s couch for a month, and then I got an apartment that was very tiny because I didn’t have a lot of money. But I worked one job at a dance company and I got free class, so that was huge. It was a company that I had auditioned for in May, the weekend that I graduated actually, and I made it really far. It was a company that I was really interested in. Since I got free class, I took a 10am class pretty much every day, and then I worked 3 to 8 Mondays through Thursdays, and Saturdays from 9 to 2. I also had another job at a fitness-tech gym, a pretty small gym, where I was essentially a trainer. I worked the early shift, so I worked from 6am to 9am, and Fridays I worked 6am to about 2pm. It was really intense. I would have to wake up at 4:30, commute to work, go dance, work my other job, so long days. It was really tough and I didn’t like it a lot of the time. You’re really tired and it was a lot of hard work. You’re doing all that, and then there’s also auditions you’re going to. You’re training to do well at these auditions, but there’s hundreds of people there, so it’s very intense for sure.”

“When you’re auditioning for a company, typically you’ll have a time slot that you sign up for. It could start at maybe 9am and go until 12pm for the first round. What you’ll do is you’ll learn a section of choreography, and in the first round you go in small groups of 10 or so people, maybe 15. Then you perform that choreography in front of a panel of people, and that’s usually the artistic director and the rehearsal director of the company as well. There were some other people watching, such as the dancers in the company. You’ll perform and then, keep in mind you have a number that you’re wearing, so at the end of each round they’ll tell you who’s going to the next round. They’ll call your number and say, ‘Okay, these numbers are going to the next round, everyone else, thank you so much for coming,’ and that’s it and you’re out of there. If you get cut, you’re done. If you’re moving forward, you stay but you’re waiting around because all of that was just the first round. A lot of these auditions have around 300 people. So they narrow it down and there’s a second round where you learn a new piece of choreography. There’s more cuts, and this goes until the very end when they decide who to pick. It’s typically a pretty long process depending on the number of people. If you make it to the end, it’s probably close to 5pm, so you’re there for a while. Sometimes there will be another day where they do final callbacks as well, so it’s really rigorous because they’re making many cuts throughout the day. I made it to the final ten in the Paul Taylor company before I got cut. There was another company called Rioult, and they’re smaller. I made it pretty far there as well. I made it to the end, and then they had next day callbacks and I got cut right before those. I was probably in the top 20 or so. There’s been some other auditions where they might be run a little differently, more of a class style. During these, everyone is taking classes where you do a bunch of different things. Then at the end you’ll wait a long time before they cut you. So there’s definitely auditions where I was cut earlier as well.”

“At the beginning of COVID, my one job at the dance company told me they were closing down for five weeks. I was thinking, ‘holy crap, I’m not going to be able to pay my rent,’ so I came home to Pennsylvania. Early on, those first two weeks where everyone was saying ‘two weeks to flatten the curve,’ every dance company was kind of trying to figure it out. They were trying to get online classes streamed and there were a lot of Instagram live streams happening, so I was joining a lot of those. Both of my jobs were in person jobs, so they were closed down. I kind of worked a little bit. At my dance company job I made sure we were posting on social media still since that was a big part of my position. I was also streaming some of the live streams for the younger kids. But I myself was on Instagram taking tons of different classes. It was really dark. I think everyone was not expecting it to last as long as it did. I know for me personally, the first couple of weeks doing the online classes was kind of great. You felt like you had this sense of community. you were able to take multiple classes in a day at different companies because they were all just available to you right there. You’re feeling really motivated to do this, but then there came a point where it was a little less motivating. You’re thinking, ‘okay, how long am I going to do this for?’ Then some companies started charging for their classes because they have to stay afloat too. They moved to a zoom model where you would have to pay. After that, it became a little bit more difficult. I don’t want to have to pay for an online class, but I want to give to these companies because I know they’re struggling. Dance companies usually make all of their money from touring, performances, and ticket sales essentially. Some of them also have schools. It was really scary, though. A lot of companies closed, like Rioult that I mentioned. They didn’t make it through COVID, and completely closed down. It was tough for me personally because you’re not able to audition and no one was hiring, so you have to decide how you’re going to make money at the end of the day.”

“The vaccine has definitely helped the dance world recover. I think companies now are doing a lot better. I know there’s some performances where everyone, the dancers included, wear masks, but now I think it’s less like that. It feels a lot more normal being in New York. I’ve seen a couple of Broadway shows, and I saw a dance show two weekends ago I think. There’s definitely more happening which has been great. But I would imagine that, financially, there are still a lot of struggles. And I know, as a dancer, there’s a lot less auditions and paid opportunities. I will say that class has been mostly normal. You have to be vaccinated everywhere I take class. Right now you don’t have to wear a mask, but they’ve changed it a couple of times. I was wearing a mask around January and February, so they are kind of always changing the guidelines still. But vaccines have totally helped everyone be able to go back to the studio, and that’s huge.”

“My life has changed a lot. I ended up getting a full time job, salaried, at a market research company, which is not something I had experience with. I knew that if I wanted to move back to New York I was going to need a job, and I was going to need to pivot a little bit. Now, I still work for that company. I started working there in the Summer of 2020, so I was able to move back to the city. I got a great COVID deal on my apartment. My job is pretty much fully remote, and I only go into the office maybe once a week. At first it was hard because it was all job all the time and I wasn’t really dancing. I wasn’t back in a dance studio until last Summer, and that was when they first opened back up. I didn’t really do many virtual classes either. I was a little scared because I was out of dance shape, but it was so great to just be back in the studio and have that sense of community that was lost. Currently I go usually every Wednesday and Thursday to take classes that I really enjoy. I’m definitely more balanced, but I’m still not dancing as much as I was. But I feel like it’s really nice to have financial stability and still be able to dance. I’ve also put less pressure on myself to feel like I need to dance to support myself living here. Auditions had a lot of pressure and class also had a lot of pressure, because I wanted a dance job so bad. Now I feel like I’m dancing more because I love it, and it’s more enjoyable. There are still auditions and opportunities that I’m sure will happen. I’m more in corporate America now, but I’m dancing at the same time.”