Letter and Apology to Dancers About To Enter the Dance World

FROM THE GREEN ROOM: Dance/USA's e-Journal: Let’s start with the bad news. Remember the plot from every dance movie ever, where the protagonist overcomes adversity to get a starring role in a major dance company? (See Fame and its inevitable remake, Staying Alive, Center Stage, Center Stage: Turn It Up, Billy Elliot, Black Swan, The Turning Point, among thousands of others.) It turns out there aren’t many of those jobs any more. Sure, there are a few gigs that come with juicy solo parts and health insurance, but they’re pretty hard to find, and as institutional companies fold or devolve into chaos one by one (Cunningham, Brown, et al) they’re getting rarer and rarer.