PRECARITY IN MOSCOW’S CONTEMPORARY DANCE SCENE
Alena Papina
My main focus is on the precarity in dance, specifically in the contemporary dance community in Moscow, which I am a part of. I have been working as a curator at TSEKH Contemporary Dance Centre and have spent a lot of time communicating with people in the dance scene. My observations come from my personal experience, and when we spoke of financial concerns, it was evident that opportunities in what is considered the most developed city of Russia are not that extensive.
If we list them, these opportunities would fall into four categories:
professional dance companies, hiring dancers on a contract or salary (three of them in Moscow)
arts and cultural institutions in need of a dance specialist on project-based conditions (for instance, Garage Museum of Contemporary Art and V-A-C Foundation)
commercial industries hiring dancers and choreographers to promote their products (S7 Airlines, Yandex Taxi, Aviapark Shopping Mall)
educational centres in need of a dance teacher (governmental schools and private educational initiatives)
Though this might look encouraging, we should take a closer look at a professional contemporary dancer as a person, and at the conditions of employment possible in the work situations mentioned above. As long as the practices of dancemakers are considered ‘radical’, they don’t fit into the professional clichés of the dance world, and until now, are also poorly supported by arts institutions who view dance as a subset of theatre.
What is the average background a dancer requires to enter these spheres? Do higher educational departments and dance academies fit these needs? What are the chances of getting a well-paid full-time job in the dance field? What are the chances of constantly running from one job to another? Under what conditions can one grapple with the dilemma of making pure art and staying poor, or moving into another field for the sake of one’s well-being?
Asya Belaya presenting her project ArtHunter
A dancer’s background: emerging from academia
Let us get a closer look at the professionals - graduates from Moscow’s GITIS, MGUKI, and Ledyah Academy. The programme design of these higher educational centres focuses on ballet / modern / jazz / folk dance technique, lacking interdisciplinary and lab-based aspects. Their alumni are skilled performers, but lack training in contemporary critical discourse— which is a skill sought by leading arts institutions.
As Asya Belaya, a dancer and choreographer in real life and a performer in Caries of Capitalism, states, there are only three professional contemporary dance companies, which receive funding from the state or a patron fund- Ballet Moskva, New Ballet and Stanislavski Electrotheatre Dance Troupe. Each of these companies sustains around 15 dancers. The contract is typically signed for the theatre season, but most of the contracts are being prolonged, so members stay with the troupe for multiple seasons. Just for reference: the annual number of dance majors graduating from Moscow institutions is around 100.
Due to the profusion of vacancies in government schools and the lack of employment in theatre, most of the graduates move to teaching, like in Europe (Burrows 2010). Eventually, they end up teaching the same set basics to a kindergarten class, no longer developing as an artist. Feeling enormous hunger for personal development, one can sacrifice economic and other material benefits for the sake of self-realisation— and rush into additional (and costly) international schooling, unpaid residencies or lab opportunities, or independent initiatives with poor funding. Such anxiety is common not only in Moscow, but also in other major cities in Europe (Rychlik 2019).
Now let us turn to the amateurs— people coming from various occupations, who consider performing a labour of love. Highly motivated as dancers while being regularly paid for their main jobs, this group rarely asks to be paid for performance. In treating dance as a hobby, they sabotage the market. And because the market doesn’t always require exceptional performance, it is happy to work with these people. This shift has produced a new group of people between professionals and amateurs— whom we can term ‘impostors’. People who have quit their first occupation and turned to a career in contemporary art or dance in particular, are highly precarious. Juggling freelance assignments from their former line of work with project-based contracts offered by arts institutions, and a continuous process of self-education, impostors push themselves into a long-term self-precarisation, which can lead to a burnout.
Natalia Zaitseva presenting her project. ‘ББД’ stands for Universal Basic Income.
Finances, emotional labour and self-promotion
No matter what the dancer’s background is, self-promotion is their primary concern in capitalistic society. Shifting from one competency to another, a dancer becomes a selling machine, where one is constantly forced to be productive under pressure of growing old - and therefore less in demand.
As David Hesmondhalgh and Sarah Baker state in their work, some of the characteristics of creative labour are project-based employment, self-employment or freelance work, mobility, multiple kinds of employment at the same time, the importance of social networks, and the uncertain career prospects that these networks hold. Future job prospects are closely connected with emotional management and therefore, the concept of emotional labour.
So, we come to a point where a dancer requires a set of marketing skills, to work on social media promotion campaigns, personal branding, project management. They also require legal and financial awareness and psychological acceptance and flexibility. Then a commercially successful dancer becomes a self-entrepreneur, willing to grab an opportunity from any of the sectors listed above and also occasionally looking for part-time jobs in a cafe or a hostel in moments of misery.
Psychologically such a person deals with multi-tasking, which is a skill that is highly in demand in the neoliberal economy. In a stable office position, this would be a highly valued skill. The irony of the art world is that this is a skill that is essential— merely for survival.
Ephemeral production and physical exhaustion
The body is already a fragile entity, but a dancer must find the physical ability to earn money through their body. They spend hours in the studio to keep the body at its desired quality, but since dance is ephemeral, a dancer cannot rely on royalties or become complacent about their achievements— because the body is always transforming and in need of long hours of practice. Also, the job of a dancer requires treatments and expenses others might consider a luxury, such as studio rent, massages, a personal therapist, photographers and film editors. This package of services needed is comparable to what a celebrity might need— but contemporary dance can hardly promise a comparable standard of payment.
Xenia Anikeeva presenting her project.
Ways out and strategies for the future
What can one do to overcome poverty while rooting one’s work in the values and aesthetic of contemporary dance as a profession? Asya Belaya, a performer at Caries of Capitalism came up with the idea of a mobile app, ArtHunter, which connects independent artists to each other. She would also like to work on creating a grant-making fund and subsidies for freelance artists, perhaps through a theatre production. She won the prize fund on the premiering night of Caries of Capitalism.
Audience voting at Caries of Capitalism
WORKS CITED
Burrows, Jonathan. A choreographer's handbook. Routledge, 2010.
Rychlik, Klaudia. “Negotiating passion and precarity: An Anthropological Study of Freelance Dancers in Stockholm.” 2019
Alena Papina is a dance artist, choreographer, performer and curator in the field of contemporary dance, as well as a researcher of site-specific art. She initiated various multi-disciplinary and cross-institutional projects as a curator at TSEKH Dance Center and founded her own educational project Looks Like Dance Company.