Choreographers Career Paths, Field Awards and Career Outcomes on the Contemporary Dutch Dance Field

An artist is known by his reputation. Especially on the cultural markets institutional recognitions are a valuable means of telling apart masters from mediocre (Bourdieu, 1983). By ensuring exalted artist reputation and long-lasting recognition, the honors might make the difference on artists career paths and career outcomes on precarious and contingent artistic labor markets (English, 2011). On popular art fields, such as cinema and music, different field awards have a long history of producing fame and making stars. They legitimize the artform, awarding institutions, and of course the awarded artist alike (Braden, 2012). Contemporary dance is a less appreciated art field by big crowds and choreographers making cotemporary dances less know artistic occupation. Yet, giving out awards and recognitions for choreographers, their artistic and career achievements have increased manifold since the last couple of decades. The previous studies on field awards have much emphasized the economic aspects of prestige, how the awards affect the value of artistic goods, the canonization of artists and the tastes of audiences. It is thought that accumulating reputation leads to an accumulative advantage in competition for scares resources, favorable market positions and popularity among spectators. In this paper I asks if the honors also might help the artist to lead more sustainable careers, lasting beyond the momentary hype of winning? Thus, to what extend does the accumulation of recognition from filed awards benefit the living artists careers and do they matter on such small art field as contemporary dance in particular? This study aims to first of all shed light on to the choreographers’ career paths and describe their career trajectories from occupational perspective. Naturally, besides honors various other factors affect the choreographers’ careers and career outcomes. The artistic careers are often deeply intertwined with other life spheres (Netzer & Parker, 1993). Besides the awards, and the life events on personal sphere, different career dimensions are described and considered. Take as an example career mobility and embeddedness and entropy and stability, which reflect the boundaryless characteristic of the occupation. Sequence analyses is used as the method to gain insights to the complex reciprocal dynamics governing the field and the career paths of the choreographers on the contemporary Dutch dance field.