After looking into my inquiry with regards to ethics I have decided to completely change what my inquiry is about. Although I was interested in my topic in question and about Chinese Culture, I realised the inquiry would be too hard to carry out whilst I am still in the UK.
I have now started researching about how to maintain a professional dance career. One thing I have noticed for myself and where I have seen others struggle, is maintaining their career. Once you have left college it is all about getting a job, would you get one? how long will it be until you do? have other people in your year been successful yet? All these questions and worries go through your head once you have left college and have join the big wide world. When I first graduated I got a job on a UK tour in the summer I left, which I was so excited about as I was not expecting to. After that I think most people think it will be easier once you have your first break… however it isn’t.
Maintaing your career I think is one of the hardest parts about the industry and that is where most people start to give up or go into something else other than performing. From my own experience, and seeing my friends and colleagues going through the same thing, it made me want to look into if there was a way to help people with the smaller problems of being a performer in order to make the bigger problems easier. There will always going to be an area that you can’t control, which is whether you will be chosen for the job, however putting yourself in the best form possible will always increase your chances of being more successful. So many times myself and the majority of performers I know have not been able to go to auditions because they have had to work to get money to pay for rent, food, classes and the gym in order to live and stay in shape. However if you aren’t able to make the auditions because of this how will you get a performing job which is what you actually want to do.
I started by thinking about the main factors involved.
1). How do you become a professional dancer?
2). What is a professional dance career?
3). Once you have achieved this status, what are the obstacles involved?
4). What would help overcome these obstacles?
5). Is that help accessible?
I have started a Special Interest Group (SIG) which I have created on Google Plus, please find the link below:
I would love to know everyone’s thoughts on this topic.
Hi Francesca,
ReplyDeleteI am also looking into a similar topic, so I feel our paths will cross at some point. I want to look into what makes a dancer employable in order to inform me and other dancers how we can have the best chance of being successful at auditions and maintain a successful career. It is an interesting topic because even if you secure one job, contracts tend to be fairly short, so we always find ourselves back to the drawing board at more auditions in the hope of securing another job. I feel your inquiry topic will be very helpful to dancers as the majority of us will always experience this and would love to have more information in order to help them.
Sian x
Hi Sian,
ReplyDeleteThat sounds great, our topics should cross paths, as I want to find out if there is a way we can get more help or education in keeping a career successful so that people can have longer careers and less struggle in between contracts. This links very much to yours in how we can make ourselves more employable. Your topic is directly focused to that, as most of us want to be the most employable so we can go from contract to contract, without long breaks in between. I look forward to seeing to discussing our findings.
Francesca x
HI Francesca - just looking for updates?
ReplyDelete