Thank you.
I'd like to thank the committee for this opportunity to speak about the situation for professional dancers regarding career transition.
Founded in 1985, the Dancer Transition Resource Centre is a national charitable organization dedicated to helping dancers make necessary transitions into, within, and from a professional performance career. Our services are available to professional dancers across Canada and in both languages.
For this presentation we'll be focusing specifically on issues regarding only those dancers with performance careers. I don't wish to minimize the concerns of the wider dance community in any way, or other cultural workers, because we're aware that the overall discipline is struggling with endemic and interrelated issues that concerns all dancers and ultimately affects their careers. But as we can see, our other colleagues are very good at this and the committee will hear their issues.
Dancer transition is an internationally well-documented issue. I would like to start with a quote from Making changes: facilitating the transition of dancers to post-performance careers, the report of a major international research project conducted by the Research Center for Arts and Culture of Columbia University in 2004. It reads:
We know of no other occupation that requires such extensive training, that is held in such esteem as a contribution to culture, and pays so little.
As you've been hearing.
...in the long run, the vitality of dance activity itself requires attention to the welfare of those engaged in it.
Thus, inadequacy of career transition support not only creates significant challenges for individual dancers, but also imposes a social cost in the form of wasted human capital.
As you've heard, becoming a dancer requires an abundance of rigour, passion, discipline, and commitment. Dance careers are extremely demanding and highly competitive. It is appropriate that a dancer's career profile is frequently compared to that of a high performance athlete's. The training of a dancer begins at a very early age, often as young as eight, and it takes about 10 years before they enter the field.
When they do enter a dance career, the majority of dancers will find they are self-employed and are working from contract to contract or juggling several contracts at a time. They will often be creating their own projects because they really want to dance. The emerging dancers tend to develop a strong resilience to financial hardship.
According to a national survey of professional dancers in Canada conducted by Hill Strategies Research in 2005—and these numbers jump all over the place—the annual earning from dance was $18,000, but the median was just over $11,000. Despite this data, and instead of leaving the career, most adopt a strategy to diversify their activities. Therefore, 72% of professional dancers supplement their income with additional part-time work either within or outside the dance milieu.
According to many studies and to the DTRC's own observations, a performance career of a dancer lasts about 15 years. There are several reasons for the career to come to an end. Physical limitations due to age or injury, financial insecurity and lack of employment are common, but also discouragement. Performance stress, chronic pain, and lack of artistic opportunities are reasons for a dancer to make the difficult decision to stop dancing.
This is almost an inevitable step, and it requires specialized support. While we appreciate that some improvements in conditions of the dance profession have contributed to the extension of the career, no action will completely lead to the eradication of the issue. Ultimately, the majority of professional performing careers have ended by the age of 40. At an age when most professionals are reaching the peak of their career and have a stable socio-economic status, it's not unusual for a dancer's career to end. Sometimes it ends abruptly, leaving psychological and financial hardship in its wake.
It's a major challenge for many dancers to overcome the difficulty of career change. To address this, very many countries have initialized special programs. Over the years our organization has built and evolved programs to respond in the most economical and appropriate way possible to the challenge facing not only dancers, but indirectly the whole community. The heart of our mission remains to support dancers through the transition process, because we know when they're properly supported they can become aware of their transferable skills and have the ability to set goals that properly reflect their unique potential.
By offering retraining support to dancers at the end of their career, the DTRC ensures that they can continue to use their creative artistry in conjunction with their new skills, and contribute to society in a meaningful way, because they're gifted citizens and they want to remain productive. Forty is pretty young to hang up your shoes.
Again, to quote from Making Changes, the international study, “The issue of dancer career transition creates challenges on multiple levels—not just for individual dancers, who warrant assistance with the educational, emotional, and financial challenges they face at the end of their career, but also for the field and the culture at large.”
For the field of dance, the issue of dancer transition connects to issues of dancer recruitment and dancer retention. In an increasingly competitive workforce, aspiring dancers and their families may be reluctant to make or encourage a commitment into a field where long-term financial, educational, and psychological needs go unaddressed.
Just as a side note, the artistic director of Canada's National Ballet School, Mavis Staines, was talking to Minister Glover in the fall, and I quote:
I believe the DTRC's unique contributions at the pan-Canadian professional dance community are invaluable. ln fact, it is thanks to the services offered by the DTRC that l can ethically encourage Canadian parents to support their children's dreams to pursue professional careers as dance artists.
For the general population, the issue of career transition creates a lost economic opportunity to transfer valuable human capital to the global workplace where ex-dancers can embark on valuable and satisfying new careers, and employers can reap the benefits of having highly skilled, trainable, and creative workers who are so in demand. A growing body of literature indicates that through their training and professional performing careers, dancers develop a unique and valuable set of skills and abilities. Where appropriate retraining is made available, dancers can and do make substantial contributions to diverse sectors in the economic marketplace and in society.
If Canada sees dance as an art form that it wishes to protect and whose existence is justified by the positive externalities it generates, and if Canada wishes to develop excellent dancers and retain talent, its only option is to view the reality of the dancers' profession in its entirety and to support these dancers throughout the natural cycle of their careers.
Thank you.