Canadian Heritage Committee on May 4th, 2015

[The Chair (Mr. Gordon Brown (Leeds—Grenville, CPC)), Conservative, Gord Brown]

Good afternoon, everyone.

We're going to call to order meeting number 44 of the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage.

Today we are embarking on our study of dance in Canada. For the first hour, from the Department of Canadian Heritage, we have Marc Lemay, director general of the arts policy branch. as well as Robert Hunter, director of strategic arts support at the arts policy branch. Also, from the Dance Collection, we have Amy Bowring, director of collections and research. And by video conference from Canada's National Ballet School in Calgary, we have John Dalrymple.

Each of our three groups will have up to eight minutes each, and then we'll move to some questions.

We'll start with our officials from the Department of Canadian Heritage, for up to eight minutes.

You have the floor.

[Marc Lemay, Director General, Arts Policy Branch, Department of Canadian Heritage]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

The Department of Canadian Heritage appreciates this opportunity to appear before the committee in the context of its study of dance in Canada.

Our objective today is to present committee members with an overview of the professional not-for-profit dance sector in Canada, and how it is supported at the federal level. We will be pleased, of course, to answer questions you may have for us, to the best of our knowledge.

Let's move directly to page 3 of the document that gives an overview of the professional arts sector. The arts in Canada encompasses a broad range of cultural activities that include the performing arts, the visual arts, media arts, and literature. Dance is one of the many disciplines in the professional arts sector. The work of Canadian dance artists and ensembles is created, produced, presented, and toured nationally and internationally by numerous organizations that directly provide arts experiences to Canadians in a large number of communities, while at the same time contributing to the economy.

If we turn to page 4, you will see that the Canadian arts sector is indeed an important contributor to Canada's economy: a contribution of $12.1 billion to the GDP, of which $1.9 billion relates to live performing arts. In 2011 there were 136,600 artists in Canada, 8,100 Canadians employed as dancers, and these people represented 6% of all artists in Canada. In 2012 there were 1,115 not-for-profit performing arts organizations registered in Canada, and 139 not-for-profit dance companies received public sector support in 2013-14.

Let's move on to page 5, which deals with the funding of professional arts organizations in Canada.

A diversified and balanced mix of public and private sector revenues is a distinctive characteristic of the Canadian arts sector. Professional Canadian arts organizations count on diversified revenue streams and enjoy support from the ticket-buying public, touring, the private sector and the three orders of government.

About three-quarters of the income of Canadian performing arts organizations is self-generated or comes from private sources. Government funding represents, on average, 26% of the revenues of these organizations. Of that public portion, the federal contribution typically represents about 8%. In the case of dance companies, more specifically, about two-thirds of their income is self-generated or comes from private sources, while approximately 14% comes from federal funding sources. The Statistics Canada performing arts survey reports attendance of more than 1.3 million at dance events at not-for-profit professional dance companies in 2012. According to this survey, attendance at dance performances has remained relatively stable since 2006.

The federal framework of support for the arts. Direct federal support for the arts is provided by complementary programs delivered by the National Arts Centre, the Canada Council for the Arts and the Department of Canadian Heritage. The National Arts Centre mainly focuses on the production and presenting of performing arts in the nation's capital. The Canada Council for the Arts mainly supports professional artists and arts organizations. It's principal focus is on funding artistic creation and production across all artistic disciplines.

Canadian Heritage is responsible for policy and legislation. It also delivers programs that contribute to strengthening business practices in the sector, improving cultural infrastructure, ensuring Canadians' access to professional arts experiences in their communities, and training Canada's future artists. Arts organizations also receive ad-hoc support for special projects from other federal institutions, most notably from Infrastructure Canada for their performances spaces.

I will now talk about the National Arts Centre.

The NAC co-produces and presents works that have toured nationally and internationally, especially in the realm of dance, as well as festivals, such as the Ontario Scene events, which are taking place right now, in May.

The Canada Council for the Arts invests primarily in the making of art by individual artists and arts organizations, and supports creation, production and touring activities. The Canada Council for the Arts plays a key role in supporting dance artists and the creation and production of dance throughout the country.

The Department of Canadian Heritage has four programs that support the non-profit professional arts sector. I would like to start with the Canada arts training fund. Through this program, Canada's most promising artists receive excellent training for national and international careers in the arts. Forty percent of this program supports dance training institutions.

A second program, the Canada arts presentation fund, invests in some 600 arts festivals and performing arts series in more than 250 communities each year, in almost every part of the country. Through the Canada arts presentation fund, 238 festivals and performing arts series with a dance component were supported in 2013-14.

Third, the Canada cultural spaces fund occupies a unique niche in federal infrastructure funding by providing support to smaller projects of non-profit organizations that improve the conditions for the creation and presentation of professional artistic work. Some 42 dance projects received support from this program since 2006.

Finally, in 2013-14,the endowment incentives component of the Canada cultural investment fund provided matching funds to 22 dance organizations for a total of $8.8 million, and the strategic initiative component provided assistance to four projects with dance partners totalling $1.5 million.

In conclusion, support for the creation of, and access to, Canadian artistic experiences, including dance, has been an objective of successive governments. The federal investment in the Canadian dance sector has improved access to professional dance performances for Canadians in all parts of the country. It has also made the dance sector more resilient and entrepreneurial. The funding priorities of federal arts programs promote pan-Canadian values of diversity, linguistic duality, and national-caliber excellence.

The challenge for policy-makers is to remain responsive in a world of rapidly changing conditions, so that artists and arts organizations can continue to contribute to the vitality of their communities.

I wish to thank you for your time today. My colleagues and I are available to answer any questions you may have.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gord Brown]

We'll now move to Amy Bowring from Dance Collection Danse, for up to eight minutes.

[Amy Bowring, Director, Collections and Research, Dance Collection Danse]

Thank you for the opportunity to speak with you today about something that has been a major part of my life since 1978. Dance has played a role in Canadian lives for a very long time. The dance profession in Canada goes back further than most Canadians realize. It also intersects with the broader social, political, economic, and military history of Canada. The stories of dancing Canadians are truly Canadian stories.

I'm the director of collections and research at Dance Collection Danse, a non-profit arts organization that is a combination of archives, exhibition gallery, publisher, and research centre. Our mission is to safeguard and disseminate Canada's theatrical dance heritage. We are the only organization in Canada with this mandate. We serve all kinds of people, from scholars and students, to journalists and filmmakers, to curators and amateur genealogists, to the artists themselves. We create live exhibitions in our gallery in Toronto. We loan artifacts to other museums, such as Pier 21 in Halifax, and we co-produce exhibitions with partners such as the Confederation Centre Art Gallery in Charlottetown.

We disseminate Canada's dance history to the wider public through our annual magazine, as well as the 39 books we have published, including the only bilingual encyclopedia of dance in Canada. We offer programming to the public through lectures, panels, screenings, and our grassroots archiving workshops.

We also have extensive content on our website that tells the stories of dancing Canadians, and we strive to make connections between our dance ancestors and the vibrant community of today. Among the varied researchers who come to us are those Canadians who have discovered that their mother or father danced professionally. They come to us asking about their parents, and we help them reclaim a part of their ancestry that was little known to them. One such man, a retired geographer from Kingston, did so much research that he ended up self-publishing a book about his mother's dance career in the vaudeville era.

Not as many walk through our door as they do at Library and Archives Canada, or at the Royal Ontario Museum, but for those Canadians we help, we are often the only ones who can help. The importance of Dance Collection Danse lies in our ability to extract the extraordinarily rich record of dance in Canada that is beyond the consciousness of most Canadians. We are anxious to continue to discover and tell that story.

The stories contained within our collection are linked to the broader story of Canada. Over the decades that the suffragettes and then the Famous Five women were fighting for the rights of women, dancers and dance teachers were practising and legitimizing the kind of female empowerment that Agnes Macphail and Nellie McClung were striving for. Women in dance were earning their own money on the vaudeville stages of Canada and buying their independence and their right to choose their own lifestyles. The teachers of the period were business owners and entrepreneurial women who paid rent for studios and performance halls. They paid musicians, bought sheet music and costumes, and contributed to the economy.

Toronto dance teacher, Amy Sternberg, even created what is probably the first teacher training program in dance in Canada, thus developing the next generation of teachers, and empowering young women in the 1920s.

Dancers also contributed to the war effort during both world wars. Their role in boosting morale by organizing troop shows and visiting local bases was vital for the men waiting to go overseas. Groups like the Bomba-Dears in Winnipeg and the Rhythmettes in London would gather after their school or work days with a brown bag dinner in their hands and board a bus to travel out to the bases in their region and perform. They returned home in the wee hours of the night only to get up early the next morning and do it all again. They sometimes found themselves shovelling out the bus during snow storms so they could get to the troops. Some of their counterparts made it into the big military reviews that toured Canada and then followed the allies into Europe after D-Day.

Dancers organized benefit concerts to raise money for recruitment or Red Cross efforts. There was not a dry eye in the house during the Peace Ballet that was part of Amy Sternberg's fantastic extravaganza at Massey Hall in 1915. The audience looked to the hundreds of soldiers in attendance who had been training at the CNE grounds and would soon be heading overseas.

Dancers also became soldiers and medics. The male ranks of Boris Volkoff's Canadian ballet were quickly depleted at the start of World War II as dancers joined the Canadian medical corps or the air force. For many, those years without training ended their budding careers, but several returned to dance after the war using their DVA credits to pay for training.

Canada’s immigration story is also revealed through dance. It is likely that social and sacred dances have been practised here since the arrival of Canada’s earliest aboriginal peoples. Ballroom dances were transported by French and British settlers, and every immigrant population has brought its vernacular or folk dances.

Even when we trace Canada’s theatrical dance heritage and the work of professionally trained dancers, it also parallels our immigration history. During and after the Russian Revolution, imperial-trained Russian ballet dancers started opening studios and arranging concerts in various Canadian cities. After World War II, displaced persons began arriving from eastern Europe, bringing ballet as well as the German expressionist modern dance of Mary Wigman.

Our three oldest ballet companies were all developed by immigrant women, and when the doors of immigration opened wider to Asia, Africa, and the Caribbean in the latter 20th century, a diverse range of artists brought their dances to Canada and provided Canadian audiences with exciting forms that they had only previously been able to access through touring companies. Menaka Thakkar and Rina Singha brought bharatanatyam and kathak from India. Patrick Parsons brought the dances of the Caribbean. William Lau added Peking opera to our artistic landscape, and there are still mysteries to be solved. We have found evidence of a school of Spanish and flamenco dance in Toronto as early as 1925. We know there is more to discover and that the history is richer and deeper than we currently realize.

When the federal government enacted the Canada Council into existence in 1957, everything changed. That one cultural policy shift created possibilities for the development of a professional art scene in Canada. It gave artists a fighting chance to develop Canadian culture despite living beside the behemoth of the United States. Artists could share Canadian stories with Canadians and the world in a rich and vital way.

For dance, it meant better training, proper venues, and the chance to earn a living as a dancer in our own country. Dance Collection Danse ensures that the investment made in dance by government, foundations, and private donors has an enduring legacy for future generations.

I envision a Canada where dance and its heritage matter. I would like to see a cultural policy that recognizes all of the arts as a valued asset within Canadian society and where dance and its heritage are seen as a necessary thread in the fabric of our great nation, a nation built on vision, a vision built in the ballrooms of Charlottetown and Quebec in 1864.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gord Brown]

Thank you very much.

We will now go to Calgary, Alberta to hear from John Dalrymple, for up to eight minutes.

You have the floor, sir.

[John Dalrymple, Director, Strategic Initiatives, Canada's National Ballet School of Canada]

Thank you very much. I really appreciate being here. I'm here representing Canada's National Ballet School. Our major funder is the Department of Canadian Heritage, so we're very happy to be at this table today.

The ballet school has been around for 55 years. We're basically committed to the idea of demonstrating the relevance of dance to every individual in Canada. Dance improves quality of life, it improves health, it has emotional and cognitive benefits, whether you're watching it or doing it. Our principal role in that process, and it has been this way since the founding of the organization, has been to train Olympic-calibre young people to become the great performers and stars of tomorrow, and that remains a steadfast principle of the school.

Something that has been significant for us as we've been moving forward thinking about the future of our art form and the future of our organization is how do we demonstrate that relevance more broadly? Typically, you have a small population of individuals who have been exposed to dance at a young age, and those are the people we're relying on to become the audiences of tomorrow, so we wonder about the rest of the young people in Canada, and what about the rest of the aging populations in Canada for whom dance can also be a significant benefit?

We started a program called Sharing Dance, and that's really what I want to talk about in my presentation today. Sharing Dance is an umbrella program that has three streams. Stream number one is designed for young people. What it really does is to support school teachers in the public school system across the country, delivering the curriculum that is already in the physical education curriculum, and it's related to dance. When I was a kid—and it's still the same in many schools today—you did lane square dancing for three gym classes, and that was about it for your exposure to dance. The reason is because there are very few dance specialists in your average public school. It is part of a larger physical education curriculum, so we feel we have a role to play in helping teachers bring more dance into the classroom.

Our second stream deals with aging populations. There are brain issues that come with aging that are dramatically impacted by regular activities related to specialized dancing, specifically a Dancing With Parkinson's program that we've been running at the school.

The third stream is something called Sharing Dance Day, which is an opportunity to give a very accessible fun dance routine to the whole community that both of these streams can participate in, and anyone else who is involved. Once a year we have a multi-generational celebration of dance in Canada, and as we build towards 2017 our goal is to have a million Canadians involved in this program over the course of the 150th birthday year.

Sharing Dance addresses major social issues. I think that's an important thing for any art style or any arts sector to look to do. It's not enough to say fund the arts for arts' sake. We really need to look at what some of the broader issues are in society. Childhood obesity and a lack of physical activity are major priorities for most Canadians. There's a lack of resources for arts, dance, and even physical education activities in most public schools. They're all on the decline. The emotional health of our young people is something people are concerned about. Then the issues that come with aging, as we have a baby-boom aging population, is another priority for Canadians. We believe that efforts to get dance in the community can impact all of these things positively.

For the remainder of my presentation, I thought I would tie what I have to say to the points that were given to me in the outline for this appearance.

To start with, you were looking for feedback on how dance can define and express various aspects of Canadian culture. We know from the programs we deliver in the school systems, that some students can't express themselves in English as they would like. The good thing about dance is the way that it's inclusive, so it lets them experience a more level playing field with their classmates. That applies as well to students who have significant physical challenges or mobility issues.

Kids have an interest in dance, often from their cultural background, and giving kids more opportunities to dance in the classroom allows them to tap into that. Dance really celebrates our differences, but also highlights our sameness at the same time, because while the styles of dance may be different from different cultures, we all tell the story the same way.

Another question we wanted to address was how young Canadians, in nurturing and developing their physical and musical skills, can benefit from dance. You were looking for information on the health benefits of dance specifically. Well, dance is an excellent form of physical activity. There probably isn't another art form that has the same level or quality of physical activity connected to it. In fact, there have been studies done at the Arizona State University, as well as the National Cancer Institute in the United States, showing that the metabolic equivalent intensity levels of dance as delivered in a classroom context often exceed the vast majority of any other typical source of classroom activities, including playing hockey, basketball, baseball. So we're looking at an activity that has all the emotional and cognitive benefits that come with an art form but, in fact, have superior physical benefits to those we've been traditionally relying on in the school system. Those mental and emotional benefits are incredibly significant.

We acknowledge that kids today are dealing with a great number of complex stresses, and having the ability to foster social skills and emotional well-being through a creative activity is something that's really important. Also, having that specialty so we can give that back to the community is significant for us as a large arts organization.

The last piece I'd like to say about that is that about 15% of Canadian kids get access to dance through recreational activities their parents pay for. But that means 85% of kids are getting access to formal dance activities only through the school system. So we think this is a huge opportunity to really make an impact.

In terms of the impact on local economies, really, in a nutshell, we're looking at building the audiences of tomorrow. There's no way you can expect somebody to really care about dance performed at the most avant-garde, creative, or high ballet Olympic level if they've never been exposed to it as a child. It's fundamental and there's tons of research to demonstrate that.

So we feel that investments to get dance activities to kids are huge for the future of our art form. We are also looking at programs through which we can identify specific kids with real leadership ability and provide immersion experiences for them.

In terms of how the government supports dance in Canada, as I mentioned, 10% to 15% of Canadian youth are in formal programs. As the largest dance training organization, we recruit from that small slice of actually engaged dancers every year to join our professional ballet program. So, there are really untold numbers of kinesthetically gifted youth, with the potential to have amazing dance careers, who are yet to be discovered because they haven't been exposed to the art form yet. The great thing about it is that while this might help us find more Olympic-calibre amazing dance artists in Canada, this creates an opportunity for all Canadian youth to enjoy these benefits.

In terms of encouraging our dancers to stay in Canada, I think if you go back to the argument of building a really strong audience for tomorrow, then there will be more artists who stay in Canada. Many dancers go to Europe because their work is valued there more often than it is valued here. I think funding in these programs to demonstrate the relevance of dance more broadly will make that value emerge here in Canada.

Finally, we're looking for information on how we can assist dancers who are recareering. Also, as the organization that runs the largest teacher training program for professional ballet teachers as well as recreational teachers in Canada, we know that the opportunity to expose more youth to dance will actually build and support a larger recreational dance community, providing more teaching opportunities and more jobs for dancers as they recareer.

I'm happy to answer any questions, and thank you again for the time.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gord Brown]

We'll now move to the questions, and I'll ask members of the committee to keep in mind that Mr. Dalrymple is here with us as well.

We're going move to Mr. Weston, for up to seven minutes.

[John Weston, Conservative, West Vancouver—Sunshine Coast—Sea to Sky Country, BC]

Thank you, all, for being here. I'd like to welcome all of you, especially my fellow alumna from York University, Amy Bowring. It's nice to see you here.

I just wanted to say, Mr. Dalrymple, that when you said that it allowed children to tap into their individuality, I wanted you to know that we were listening and we got the pun.

[John Dalrymple]

That was actually unintended, but I'm going to use that moving forward. Thank you.

[John Weston, Conservative, West Vancouver—Sunshine Coast—Sea to Sky Country, BC]

I want to touch on four things, if I can in this very short time.

First, you made a very strong connection between physical fitness and dance, Mr. Dalrymple. I'd like you to know that parliamentarians passed a national health and fitness bill just before Christmas. We're all concerned about the rising levels of obesity, as you pointed out, and you put the solution squarely at getting children in the classrooms to dance. I'm just wondering if you want to elaborate on that a little bit, and also maybe inform us about whether there is a stigma about dance. Are there some youth in the schools who think it's not a cool thing to do? Is that something you have to deal with in doing the admirable work you're doing?

[John Dalrymple]

Yes, that is true. I think two issues have limited the presence of dance in the classroom. One is on the teachers' side of intimidation around dance. If you hadn't done it when you're young, the idea that you would stand in front of your classroom and try to lead a dance routine or an exercise is highly intimidating.

So to try to address that we're not just providing one-off video resources or written curriculum activities, but we're also creating an online learning management system that provides real-time support from Canada's National Ballet School, in some cases to help those teachers overcome being intimidated. We can create content they can deliver and send right to the classroom. So they can assist as we livestream from Toronto; they can deliver some of the exercises they really need to do to get the kids active and also to tick the curriculum boxes.

The other point you were asking about is whether dance is cool. Certainly, with a lot of boys you find initially that they don't want to dance, especially in gym class; they think it's lame. Part of that has to do with having no exposure to quality dance teaching. I can say without any reservation whatsoever that when we deliver our program in the schools, those boys' minds are changed every time. We've got a scholarship program, a very generous donor set up. So as we work in inner city schools in Toronto, and if we find kids with kinesthetic gifts, they have the opportunity to come to our after-school and weekend program for free, thanks to this donor.

We have three boys, one's from Ethiopia and one's from Afghanistan and one is from South America, and they were all shaking their heads at the beginning—they didn't want to dance, because it was lame—but they showed a real aptitude and they're kinesthetic learners, so they became leaders in the classroom. Now they're going to be joining the ballet program at the school.

I think those are realities we have to tackle; what we've seen in our program has the quality to overcome those issues.

[John Weston, Conservative, West Vancouver—Sunshine Coast—Sea to Sky Country, BC]

The issue you made about dance being even more effective than some of the traditional sports in terms of physical participation was very convincing, and I would encourage you to work with Sports Canada and other organizations like that—in other words, to cross-pollinate.

Right now 180 cities have declared National Fitness Day and maybe dance organizations should be approaching mayors and councillors and say to them that on that day we should get dance going in the various cities. I think that's a very exciting aspect of what we heard about today. Let me move on, though.

I'd like to touch on something a couple of you discussed. In fact, I think it was you, M. Lemay.

You mentioned the role of the NAC, here in Ottawa. I myself am very impressed with the programming, especially now. There is a veritable smorgasbord of arts, including dance.

How is that funnelled to the rest of the country? I know we have a capital; therefore, we have an NAC, but are you able to make sure some of those offerings are somehow broadcast to leverage this great program that we have here in Ottawa?

I'm a British Columbia MP, so it's very meaningful.

[Marc Lemay]

I can provide a bit of information to get all the information you might be looking for. I think people from the NAC would be better positioned than me to talk about it. Of course, the NAC often presents performances that tour nationally or internationally, so these won't be presented only here in the national capital region, but also in Toronto, Calgary, Vancouver, and Montreal.

What you see here at the NAC is not exclusive to the NAC. It costs a significant amount of money to create a new dance performance; therefore, you have to present it to a bigger audience than in only one city, and these productions tour.

The NAC also does co-productions with dance companies across the country and it ensures that what is presented here is the best work of Canadian dancers and choreographers from all over the country. That work can be presented on a national basis in different regions of Canada.

[John Weston, Conservative, West Vancouver—Sunshine Coast—Sea to Sky Country, BC]

That's really good to know, and it's rewarding to hear that it's leveraged across the country.

Let me switch to the financing of dance. You talked about there being many not-for-profit companies. Are they intentionally not-for-profit or do they just go that way?

You mentioned that three-quarters of the financing is from the private sector or self-generated and one-quarter is from government. I don't know who is to pronounce on what's good or bad or what's right or wrong, but maybe Amy or Marc, you could give us some insight. What do you think of those proportions: three-quarters self-generated, one-quarter from the government, and I guess 8% of the 26% from government is federal?

[Marc Lemay]

That's for the performing arts organizations altogether, not just dance. For dance organizations it's one-third, two-thirds.

But for the performing arts, yes, it's three-quarters private or self-generated.

[John Weston, Conservative, West Vancouver—Sunshine Coast—Sea to Sky Country, BC]

So one-third, two-thirds means it's one-third self-generated?

[Marc Lemay]

No, one-third is from government, two-thirds is self-generated and private sector contribution.

[John Weston, Conservative, West Vancouver—Sunshine Coast—Sea to Sky Country, BC]

Thanks for clarifying that.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gord Brown]

On that note, we're going to move to Mr. Nantel, for sept minutes.

[Pierre Nantel, NDP, Longueuil—Pierre-Boucher, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I would like to thank our witnesses for being here because we don't talk about dance often enough.

Ms. Bowring, you clearly established the fact that dance contributes significantly to the creation of a heritage and that it is one of the issues. We are talking about quality of life, of course, but also the sense of identity and pride as Canadians.

I would like to ask the representatives from the Department of Canadian Heritage, Mr. Lemay, in particular, if they can provide us now or later with the percentages of the amounts allocated to the non-profit professional arts sector.

Could you give us a general idea of the percentage that dance receives compared to other disciplines?

[Marc Lemay]

I could provide details later. Regarding the Canada Council for the Arts, we are talking about an investment of $18 million. That represents 12% of the amounts paid annually by the Canada Council for the Arts.

[Pierre Nantel, NDP, Longueuil—Pierre-Boucher, QC]

These amounts go to dance.

[Marc Lemay]

That's right.

At the Department of Canadian Heritage, the percentages vary from program to program. As I mentioned, in terms of training, 40% of program resources go to dance. So it varies from program to program. We could provide a detailed table.

[Pierre Nantel, NDP, Longueuil—Pierre-Boucher, QC]

I think it would be very useful for everyone here to have those kinds of details. During our study on music, we were often surprised by the very low incomes of musicians. If I'm not mistaken, the same is true for instrumentalists of symphony orchestras in various cities, where the salaries are not very high, when you factor in the practice time that they need to devote to maintain the quality of playing.

Can you tell us how much a professional dancer earns? There are a lot of variations, of course. I imagine that Winnipeg's star dancer earns a little more. I would certainly ask Mr. Dalrymple the same question, but Mr. Lemay, do you have any statistics on the income of professional dancers?

[Marc Lemay]

Yes, we have that data. The average income from dance for a professional dancer is a little more than $17,000 a year. With $17,000 a year, we understand that dancers often have other forms of income, other kinds of work. Professional dancers have an average income of $35,000 a year, so a little more than half actually comes from dance. Other income may come from related activities.