Well hello all.
I am a young 22 year old trying to find dance work! why is it so hard to find good contemporary dance jobs in London, England????

Greetings and wecome to Critical Dance.

I am moving your post down to Studio, where the students and teachers in this forum tend to 'meet'. I'm sure there are others in a similar situation, or who have been there in the past, who can help or at least sympathize!

Kate

Hi georgette and welcome to CriticalDance - we're really pleased you found us.

You raise a general issue about the difficulty of finding contemporary dance work in London and also your specific problem

now. On the latter point, I know dancers who look in various places, including Dance Europe:

http://www.danceeurope.net/docs/JOB/JOB.SHTML

and Juice, produced by the Place:

http://www.theplace.org.uk/create/professional_dev/juice.htm

Sorry if you already know these.

On the general point, my initial thoughts are that there are a number of major contemporary dance conservatoires in the UK, generating graduates each year looking for work in contemporary dance. Plus, London is a magnet for artists from all over the world, so there are plenty who come that way as well. In the annual Resolution! festival, there are around 85 young UK companies with several hundred dancers all looking for a way into the system. A high proportion of these will leave the performance sector for administration or whatever after 1 or 2 years. Even the most successful independent dancers tend to do other things as well, such as choreography or teaching in order to make ends meet. At the top of the pyramid, Random and Rambert offer their dancers full-time contracts, but even well-established companies such as Richard Alston's operate on 30-something week contracts, when I last enquired.

For the exceptionally talented and tenacious, there are success stories, but there is no doubt that it's a tough life and bar and building work jobs for men figure strongly in many dance careers.

In the USA, which doesnot have the levels of public funding seen in the UK, my impression is that life is even tougher and anumberof performers have parallel careers to pay the bills, rather than just casual jobs. But our US posters can expand on that theme.

Where are you from georgette and what training have you had?

<small>[ 23 March 2005, 02:13 AM: Message edited by: Stuart Sweeney ]</small>

Good luck with finding suitable work. Please keep us posted with your progress. Have you had any auditions to date? My thoughts are with you.

Jobs are hard to get. You might need more training to get one. One of the best ways to do that is to hook up with a school that has an attached company, and study at the stchool. Even if you never dance for the company, the time is well spent if you keep improving at the school. And it can also give you insight on you you stack up, as a dacner.

citibob wrote:

That's an interesting idea; in London, there is the Rambert School, but my feeling is that they tend to have formal courses, rather than drop in classes.

There is a daily professional class at The Place, which is the home for a number of companies and my guess is that an outstanding dancer would draw attention there. In any event it would provide a way of comparing yourself, as citibob suggests.