How To Make a Living as a Freelance Dancer in the Dutch Labour Dance Market

Freelancing, portfolio careers and multi jobholding are nowadays considered commonplace for professional dancers. Despite an increasing amount of studies on the career of performing artists, there is surprisingly little empirical evidence on how freelance contemporary dancers manage their careers and what skills and knowledge are needed to successfully make a living in the performing art labour market. One would expect that studying dance at university would prepare students to become fully-fledged professional dancers. However, studies have shown that there is a mismatch of those skills that the working field requires and those that are taught at higher education institutions (Bridgstock, 2011). By employing a qualitative research method and conducting twelve semi-structured in-depth interviews with freelance contemporary dancers in the Netherlands, this thesis investigates which entrepreneurial skills freelance contemporary dancers in the Netherlands need to make a living in the dance labour market and the role of education in acquiring them. The EntreComp framework (Bacigalupo et al., 2016) was used as a guiding conceptual model for this study given that it gave an overview of entrepreneurship competencies and what these entailed. I conclude that being a self-employed artist in the Dutch contemporary dance scene requires six skills: (1) Adopting a protean career orientation, (2) seeking out, using and offering support, (3) coping with uncertainty, ambiguity and risk, (4) having financial and economic literacy, (5) having promotion and communication skills and (6) combining a diverse artistic practice with freelancing. Findings appear to suggest that many of these entrepreneurial skills can be acquired through experience and by consulting other people. The latter points out that even though freelancing means being a one-person business, knowledge and skills are acquired through collaborative practices. Dutch universities with dance programmes seem to provide semi-professional experiences especially during the fourth year of studies in which respondents had the possibility of doing internships within the safety net of the university. Students are also prepared for a career of freelancing by being told to focus on their own artistic identities and creation processes. They are also given promotion and communication skills which are however often connected to formal application procedures for more long-term contractual work. Dance studies are indeed often directed at working as employees in dance companies, rather than being a freelance dancer. The study suggests a general need to increase the knowledge around what self-employment is and the implication it has for one’s career as well as make artists understand the need to combine their artistic practice with a business practice. Freelance contemporary dancers would therefore be able to make more informed choices prior to and during their careers as well as make improvements to their freelancing life.