Two Types of Dancers: Company AND Freelance
Dancers…always working, not always performing.
Company dancers:
Their work activities include technique class, rehearsals, performances and galas: leaving no time for life outside of the studio and theatre. This also explains why the dance world has traditionally been quite incestuous; dancers copulate with their dance partner or the choreographer which tends to form hierarchies within the company with regards to power.
For example, the choreographer most likely forms a sexual or intimate relationship with the prima ballerina. The logic is quite simple. The choreographer wants all the dancers. However, the dancer does not want to be told what to do by her/his lover all the time, but rather by an equal, which can only be more or less attained through her/his own stardom.
Another example would be two dancers who are partners - the ballerina and her cavalier or danseur noble. The two become inseparable. This may sound sickening to some, but imagine a dancer who dates a non-dancer, spending all her/his time with their dance partner…Who is the real partner? The dance partner, with whom all time and perceptions of the other is shared, or the one who may get to see you naked at the end of a long and tiring day/week?
Freelance dancers:
Their work activities include anything and everything from proposal writing, administration, invoicing, CV writing, dancing, performing, partying, bar-tending, life-modeling, teaching, waitressing, babysitting, watching sunsets, self-directed research and workshops in living room, audition after audition…and the list goes on to include anything that helps with paying the rent and keeping the inspiration flowing through one’s veins.
We freelance dancers may date within our own field. Or perhaps other freelance artists, entreprenuers with similar lifestyles. The beauty or demise within these relationships is that each partner cannot possibly spend all their time with the other, nor can s/he spend too much time with anyone else for that matter.
Both company and freelance dancers work:
So why are these two types of work not engaged on equal terms? Conventional views of stability continue to creep into ideas of status and how we value positions even within the same line of work. ‘Everyone wants to be in a company and feel secure.’ That’s like saying, ‘All little girls want to get married to a rich older man and have three kids by the time they are thirty.’ Yes, little girls generally think this way because even though the Western world has gone through two major waves of feminism, patriarchal values still haunt our lifestyles. This doesn’t mean, however, that little girls don’t grow up and think for learn to think for themselves. Thus, if you are a freelance dancer, you know what I mean when others ask you, ‘What you do?’ and their sympathetic or misunderstanding tones resonate with you as you serve them from behind a counter. You go home at the end of a shift feeling like that little girl again- that you are only to be successful when you join the club. You are not in a company- contained, parented, controlled, rooted in a patriarchal circle. It’s like telling that little girl that she is barren and will grow to become an old spinster.
But wait a minute, society functions like a company. The society we live in is already and always will be haunted by traditional ideals and ghosts of feminists’ past. Freelance or not, work is work. So what’s the difference? Economies suck. Rules suck. Domains and labels suck. Some lovers suck. And, work is still work.
Maybe there is no difference, but only comparisons. The word ‘and’ is not all inclusive, positive or negative. Perhaps these three little letters bring this messy world together by drawing comparisons rather than conclusions?
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