Pittsburgh Arts, Regional Theatre, New Work, Producing, Copyright, Labor Unions,
New Products, Coping Skills, J-O-Bs...
Theatre industry news, University & School of Drama Announcements, plus occasional course support for
Carnegie Mellon School of Drama Faculty, Staff, Students, and Alumni.
CMU School of Drama
Saturday, January 20, 2024
Dancer Diary: I Joined the Union!
Dance Magazine: You guys, I did it: I joined the Actors’ Equity Association! This has been a goal of mine for quite a long time. In June I wrote a column on when/why dancers should join the union, and decided to hold off for just a bit longer.
I really enjoyed this article as well as the vlog style video that was made about the experience. I didn’t know that for some auditions, dancers were essentially required to be unionized. This is different from my experience in backstage work, where the only requirement to also be on a unionized production is to take a couple classes about call referrals and respecting the union and so forth. I guess that dancers have a similar system, and I think that it's a bit odd that they don’t allow non-unionized dancers to audition, but I can understand where they’re coming from. The thing that kinda weirds me out the most is that she had different personal interactions with people after she got her union card. I don’t think that being in a union or not should change how you’re treated, but again I can understand where the audition leaders are coming from.
I watched and read the article for this and really enjoyed reading. As someone who is interested in stage management I have done quite a bit of research on equity and joining the union. One of the most difficult things for me is understanding/knowing when it is time to join equity. I really enjoyed listening to her explain this and I clicked over to watch her previous video about equity. I did not even think about people who are more focused in dance having to decide when to join the union. I still do not understand that if a dancer joins the union can they do just dance performance? Does equity carry over the strictly dance only settings and/or are they allowed to do non union dance while still acting/dancing in professional theatre. I found this video to be incredibly helpful so that is the only clarification I needed. I found it really helpful to get to see the entire application process and how joining it goes
2 comments:
I really enjoyed this article as well as the vlog style video that was made about the experience. I didn’t know that for some auditions, dancers were essentially required to be unionized. This is different from my experience in backstage work, where the only requirement to also be on a unionized production is to take a couple classes about call referrals and respecting the union and so forth. I guess that dancers have a similar system, and I think that it's a bit odd that they don’t allow non-unionized dancers to audition, but I can understand where they’re coming from. The thing that kinda weirds me out the most is that she had different personal interactions with people after she got her union card. I don’t think that being in a union or not should change how you’re treated, but again I can understand where the audition leaders are coming from.
I watched and read the article for this and really enjoyed reading. As someone who is interested in stage management I have done quite a bit of research on equity and joining the union. One of the most difficult things for me is understanding/knowing when it is time to join equity. I really enjoyed listening to her explain this and I clicked over to watch her previous video about equity. I did not even think about people who are more focused in dance having to decide when to join the union. I still do not understand that if a dancer joins the union can they do just dance performance? Does equity carry over the strictly dance only settings and/or are they allowed to do non union dance while still acting/dancing in professional theatre. I found this video to be incredibly helpful so that is the only clarification I needed. I found it really helpful to get to see the entire application process and how joining it goes
Post a Comment