Sociological and Economic Insights from the Performing Arts: Towards the Construction of Valuation of Professional Dancers in a Changing Dance Art World Climate

The thesis aims to present a framework for understanding the valuation of performing artists and more specifically professional dancers. To answer the question how the (artistic and financial) valuation is constructed within the Dutch dance art world, a selection of mainly sociological, and (cultural) economic theories are discussed, in combination with empirical insights in the field. To shed light on the underlying aspects/criteria of the valuation process of professional dancers within the Dutch (dance) art world, the opinion of an interconnected thread of players within the field is taken into consideration: The research bases its results on 20 structured online interviews (including 79 both close-, and open-ended questions) with dance artists (9), intermediaries/gatekeepers (7) and audience members (4). The valuation of an inherently unquantifiable performing arts work and the dance artist, who embodies the art, is a cumbersome task. It is not a recent phenomenon that (dance) artists and the (dancing) profession, is both from an artistic and financial perspective ‘not valued according to its worth’. In addition, -besides historically embedded conventions-, recent (cultural-,) and socio-economic developments, and changes within the dance sector, present new ‘classification systems’ (DiMaggio, 1982,1987; Janssen, 2005) for the (dance) art(s). The researcher concludes that the value of dancers is seemingly ‘lost in society’. The aspects/criteria and valuation processes need to be reinterpreted, and attention must be given to the ‘undervalued’ nature of these performing artists, if –while aiming for a long-term sustainable sector, Dutch society wishes to ‘keep (the evolution of professional) dance(rs) alive’.