By Jake LaubPLAY Writer
Imagine if doctors retired at 40. Eight years of undergraduate and medical school, 13 years to develop a practice, and then it’s time to burn the diplomas and find a new job. That is the reality of dance. By the time dancers begin their careers at 19, they’ve already trained for nine years, the longest average preparation for any profession. From there most dancers have just 13 years before sprained ankles, blown knees and general wear-and-tear cause retirement. With about 27,000 professional dancers in the U.S., that means more than 2,000 of them reach this crisis point every year. But until recently, the dance world ignored the problem. Cut off from the source of passion that had consumed their lives, many of these dancers would drift – poor, depressed and often with lingering injuries.
Former Cincinnati Ballet dancer Christine O’Neal recalls her transition out of professional dance 20 years ago as a period of isolation. “I didn’t really involve anyone in any of my decisions,” she says. “I kind of fell into it.” Suddenly staring at retirement after two decades as a professional, O’Neal applied to Smith College, received a Master of Arts from Wesleyan University and eventually became a senior artist-in-residence at Washington University in St. Louis. Like many other dancers who had emotional retirements, O’Neal is dedicated to making sure the next generation of dancers doesn’t suffer the same fate. “The question,” she muses, “is how can we do that?” The answer is finally appearing in the dance world.
For Kansas City Ballet principal dancer Lisa Choules, 34, that “how” has emerged from her vendetta against ill-fitting tutus. Frustrated with stumpy dancewear for her long, thin body, Choules took action – and uncovered a passion that started as a few home-stitched leotards but is quickly leading her off the stage and into the costume shop. Despite being a few years away from a complete career change, Choules gets lots of support. Not only does she chat with other dancers about the challenges of career transition, but she also receives formal help. Kansas City Ballet Artistic Director William Whitener has already commissioned Choules to design costumes for two of his ballets, and the national non-profit organization Career Transitions for Dancers (CTFD) has money available for sewing equipment. If Choules wants to go back to school for more training, Kansas City Ballet also has a partnership with the University of Missouri in Kansas City.
Money, education, encouragement – Choules’ case is a model of the dance world’s progress. Twenty years ago it was taboo even to talk about how to leave the profession. “Now everyone thinks about life after ballet,” Choules says. Big dance companies such as Pacific Northwest Ballet have in-house transition programs, and this year Career Transition for Dancers will spend $1.16 million on counseling, education and grants. Yet a trend is growing within this trend. Organizations such as CTFD and Pacific Northwest’s transition program, Second Stage, used to focus on dancers during or just after their retirement – the most obvious point of need – but now dancers are realizing they can avoid a messy transition if they start preparing early enough. In October CTFD dropped its age limits for receiving career counseling, and this past summer American Ballet Theater held its first Collegiate Summer Intensive, a pre-professional program for college-aged dancers. Yet while career transition aid has matured by getting younger, the movement is young to begin with.
Before the New York- and Los Angeles-based CTFD appeared in 1985, formal transition support didn’t exist. “When we had to find another career, we did it by the seat of our pants,” says Patricia Blair, who danced with the Eglevsky Ballet in New York in the late ’70s and early ’80s. “Can you blame us? We didn’t even have sprung floors back then. We danced on concrete.” It was the Stone Age of career transition. Rock-hard company discipline, low pay and early retirement left dancers on the street with no college experience and little in savings. Some ex-dancers managed to re-enter the field as instructors or administrators, but most had nowhere to turn. Suicide rates were high.
Then, in the mid-’80s, a group of ex-dancers lead by legendary choreographer Agnes de Mille and Actors’ Equity Association’s Edward Weston decided to form the CTFD. Since 1985, the CTFD has provided 37,000 hours of counseling and $2.5 million in grants, a major leap forward in awareness and financial aid. Universities also reacted to the trend. Some, like Indiana University, developed their pre-professional programs so young dancers could already have a degree when they joined a company. Others, such as St. Mary’s College in Moraga, Calif., made degrees more accessible by scheduling around rehearsals and tours. Accompanying this was a monumental shift in how the dance world thinks about dance. “Before (teachers) said dancing is hard so go out and devour it. Go be a dancer. Ignore other drives,” says Maureen Laird, associate professor of ballet at the University of Utah. “Now we prepare young students by telling them that this is a short and very special time in their lives.”
But aDvANCE, a 2004 study by the International Organization for the Transition of Professional Dancers, reveals a profession still unaware of its own challenges and unprepared for them when they do arrive. According to the study, dancers believe they’ll dance until they’re 41; the average retirement age is actually 30. When they do retire, the cost of transition ($27,000 for everything from college tuition to continuing medical treatment) still exceeds the average yearly income of a professional dancer ($20,251).
And the problem will only get larger. From 1990 to 2001 the number of professional dancers increased by one third, and from 1987 to 1997 the number of dance companies almost doubled. It’s the Baby Boomer bulge of the dance industry, and finding a solution is critical. If the public starts to view dance as the hard way to wash out of the job market early, students might feel pressured to pursue a “real” job.
To avoid this, the aDvANCE study recommended dancers start transition plans early and integrate them throughout their career. That’s why the CTFD ended its age requirement for career counseling in October 2006. Before, dancers had to be 27 years old to receive the unlimited counseling usually offered by the resource center. Now, “If dancers need our services, we want to provide for them,” CTFD Director of Development William Dale says.
Pre-professional dance academies are also promoting the younger-is-better mentality by eliminating the insular “bunhead” syndrome from dance training. Walnut Hill School in Natick, Mass., helps students plan their dance career by providing audition and college counseling while at the same time encouraging them to take the bun out of their hair and find interests outside the studio. Not only is this healthier, the aDvANCE study shows, but it can also translate into an easier transition later. “If you are passionate about something you are passionate about life,” Walnut Hill Director of Admission and Placement Lorie Komlyn says. “It’s just a matter of transitioning that passion into other areas.”
But that’s not always possible. Students in pre-professional ballet programs often dance 40-hour weeks, the equivalent of a full-time job. “It’s not a matter of having other interests,” says Blair, who now directs the School of Ballet Chicago. “There simply isn’t enough time.” She would know. As a junior in high school Blair covertly taped her physics notes to the barre before tests. To compensate, she feels her students should know what they’re getting into. Everyone in her pre-professional program must turn in analyses of their prospective companies, including pay, contract length and benefits.
And for those who aren’t comfortable abandoning their academics at 18, enough universities now offer elite dance programs to mak
e higher education a valid option. These dance programs began as branches of P.E. departments, but over the past 30 years they’ve come into their own. At the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign almost 80 percent of dance majors go on to a professional career. And with a degree already on the shelf, these dancers have more options when they retire, even if their career ends suddenly. Heidi Becklenberg, 33, wanted to audition for a company after high school, but her father said no. So they made a deal. She would go into the ballet program at Indiana University for at least a year and then decide. Four years later she graduated with degrees in music and psychology and with her ballet skills still sharp. When she developed stress fractures in both her feet while dancing with Ballet Oklahoma a few years later, she used her degree to become an elementary school teacher. “I was more marketable,” she says. “I trained (for transition) before I realized I needed it.”
On the other hand, degree opportunities have also grown for current professionals early in their careers. The Internet now allows dancers to chip away at online degrees even on tour, and formal universities give credit for professional experience and often tailor to a dancer’s schedule. In 1999 Saint Mary’s College began LEAP (Liberal Education for Arts Professionals), which allows dancers in San Francisco and Los Angeles to get a B.A. through three to four years of Sunday evening class. Classes meet near rehearsal studios and aren’t scheduled when major companies go on tour. Although the program initially attracted older professionals and post-professionals, word has spread to those just starting their careers. “More and more lately we see young dancers,” LEAP Director Mark Baird says. “They see their colleagues reading Shakespeare and Plato in the wings and they say, ‘I want to join! I want to join!'”
Programs like LEAP are also changing how artistic directors think. In the past, “the artistic management would assume these dancers (who studied on the side) weren’t giving their heart, sweat and blood to the company,” Maureen Laird says. “That taboo is gone.” Artistic directors have realized dancers who have an outlet other than ballet are happier people, and therefore happier dancers. They’ve also noticed dancers who can handle the stresses of college are more likely to tolerate long working hours and travel.
This has led directors to promote career transition on their own, either through partnerships with universities or in-house transition programs. Pacific Northwest Ballet offers both. Started in 1999, PNB’s Second Stage program provides career counseling and doles out grants of up to $8,000 to its dancers. In 2001 the company also made a deal with Seattle University to teach classes in the studio after rehearsal. Former artistic directors Kent Stowell and Francia Russell got so excited about their dancers’ first assignment, a paper on capital punishment, they would clip articles and bring them to rehearsal to help with their research. “It shows they were paying attention,” PNB soloist Maria Chapman says. Before 1999, only five members in the company had taken a college course. Now 35 have.
Yet while artistic directors and younger dancers are starting to grasp the challenges of career transition, the government has remained unhelpful. After federal grants from the National Endowment for the Arts spawned the dance boom of the ’70s and ’80s, direct government aid has dropped off, leaving the welfare system to support transitioning dancers. But dancers don’t fit well into either the retirement or unemployment federal safety nets. Because dancers typically work only 23 paid hours a week, they often aren’t eligible for full unemployment checks when those 23 hours drop to zero. Similarly, when they do retire, they are too young to collect Social Security or retirement benefits.
But why should the government care if the public doesn’t? “There’s still a feeling that dancers are these ethereal beings put up on stage and admired,” says Amanda Hancox, director of Canada’s Dancer Transition Resource Center. “These are vibrant, hard-working, creative people who need support at all points of their career, not just when they’re on stage.”
Even dedicated dance audiences rarely bother with anything behind the curtain. A dance company board member once told CTFD Executive Director Alexander Dub
