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What Becomes of Undergraduate Dance Majors?

A Study of the Five College Dance Department Graduates

November 6, 2002

Sarah S. Montgomery

And

Michael D. Robinson*

Department of Economics

Mount Holyoke College

South Hadley, MA 01075 USA

(413) 538-2215

(413) 538-2323 (fax)

*A Mount Holyoke College Faculty Grant supported this research. We are indebted to the Five College Dance Department for their generous help. We also acknowledge with thanks comments received at the ACEI Biennial Conference, Minneapolis, MN, May 2000 and comments from the editors of the Journal of Cultural Economics and two anonymous referees. We would also like to thank our research assistant Mikaila Arthur.


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1. Introduction

After leaving college and feeling pampered and cushioned for 4 years, I had a rude awakening when entering the world of dance. However, it was important for me to learn on my own how to survive and I'm glad it happened this way because I'm a much stronger person now- cause I did it on my own. I wouldn't take back those 4 years (as part of FCDD) for anything. It was not reality. But as soon as I look back to that time of my life-all I can do is smile. (UMASS, 1992)

Who majors in dance in college and what do they do after graduation? Do they enter this physically demanding and notoriously low-paid profession? If so, where do they find work? Must they also hold non-dance jobs to survive financially? Do they seek graduate training? What do they study? Can they sustain careers in dance?

We report here the results of a survey of the graduates of the Five College Dance Department (FCDD). To try to answer these and other questions, we sent them a questionnaire asking in detail about their careers. From them we learned much about the multiple jobs they held in and out of dance, about their hours and earnings, and about their graduate training. They told us not only about their work in 1998, our survey year, but also something of their earlier employment in dance. Many of our questions parallel those in other surveys of performing artists. On some topics, however, for example, graduate work, we asked for greater detail. This study is unusual in focussing exclusively on dancers and unique in including not only those currently working in the profession, but also those who chose not to enter or to enter but later leave the field. Our data confirm and extend earlier findings on artists’ work lives.

The FCDD is a consortium of departments at five closely allied Western Massachusetts schools: Amherst College, Hampshire College, Mount Holyoke College, Smith College, and the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. By the early 1970s, dance faculty from all five schools were meeting regularly, students cross-registered, and there was a joint annual concert. The program, which is set in the context of a liberal arts education, became increasingly integrated in the late 1970s. Since then curricular and personnel decisions have been made jointly, there has been a five college major in dance, and students have regularly taken classes on the several campuses. The department is one of the largest in the United States. It is highly regarded in the dance world as well as by its graduates. Forty-six percent of our respondents agreed strongly that “the program provided me with excellent technical training,” while another 44 percent agreed moderately with this statement.

Learning that the FCDD maintains an address list of its graduates, we saw the opportunity to survey them about their work lives. The department provided us with generous and essential support. The chair not only supplied the mailing list but also wrote a letter to accompany the questionnaire, urging its completion. We thank the FCDD and all of the alumnae who so thoughtfully responded to our many questions.

1.1. Other Studies.

There is a substantial body of empirical literature on the working conditions of performing and creative artists, on the determinants of their incomes, and on the nature of the supply function in artistic labor markets. These include those of Filer (1986), Wassall and Alper (1984, 1992a), Throsby (1992, 1994b, 1996), Montgomery and Robinson (1993, 2000, forthcoming). The findings of these and other analyses are summarized in Wassall and Alper (1992b), Throsby (1994a) and Towse (1995, 1996). Data come from national censuses or from specialized surveys of working artists. Those working in dance frequently have been included in the databases, but have not been the focus of the research in these studies.

In addition there have been several studies especially devoted to those working in dance. Two early papers are by Santos (1976), who employed data on dancers and singers from the 1960 U.S. Census of Population, and Gray (1984), who surveyed dancers in Minneapolis and St. Paul. There are also monographs by Netzer and Parker (1993) and by Jackson, Honey, Hillage and Stock (1994). The first includes training, performance, and 1989 income data for choreographers in four U.S. cities. The second is based on a 1993 survey of the training and careers of those in British dance and drama with detailed information on the training and current work of members of the dance profession. The study covers weeks worked both in and outside of dance, but contains no income data. In addition to having information on the respondents’ work in the preceding twelve months, it also has data on their first year in the profession.

1.2. Uniqueness of our study.

Our study contains both income and hours data for those working in all aspects of dance. The unique nature of our data arises because we survey the alumnae of a dance program. Hence not all the respondents to our survey are currently employed in dance. Some of our respondents never entered dance while others did, but later dropped out. This allows us to examine which factors are important in whether or not a dance major is employed in dance. We also have data from all who were ever in dance about years of professional experience between their college graduation and our survey year of 1998, which allows us to do some analysis of the career paths of our respondents. Our information, on the other hand, is limited to college graduates, who typically go into modern dance. Our results should therefore be applied with caution to others in the dance world.

Our knowledge of performing arts, including the findings of earlier studies, led us to hypothesize that our respondents would have low dance income, which would in many cases require them also to hold non-dance jobs. In their dance and non-dance jobs, combined, we expected them to work longer than average hours while earning less than those doing only non-dance work. We also anticipated that the respondents’ dance jobs frequently would be of limited duration. We further suspected that their economic difficulties would lead many to leave the profession after only a few years. We were interested in earlier results that showed no effect of years of education on art income while some effect on non-art income. We hoped to untangle the relationship between our respondents’ post-graduate training and income by asking detailed questions about the nature of their graduate work and about their dance and non-dance employment.

1.3. Survey Design

You may want to be more specific. For example ask…

What one considers "dance job"?

When are we "dancing" and when are we not?

What constitutes a professional vs. an amateur?

I feel (I think many of my peers would agree) that the answers are extremely subjective. (Hampshire, 1993)

We developed a survey that was sent to all the individuals on the FCDD mailing list. To allow for comparisons of results, our questions, to a substantial degree, parallel those asked in several earlier surveys of artists’ work lives. In particular we are indebted Wassall, Alper and Davidson's 1982 study of New England artists. However, because we address only dance graduates, we were able to adapt our questions specifically to the patterns of training and employment in their field. Our respondents, moreover, are not all currently in dance. The survey was conducted in 1999 and contains detailed information on the activities of the graduates in 1998 as well as substantial information about their careers. The survey concluded with two open-ended questions about the respondents' experience with the FCDD program and about their dance careers. The quotations included here come from some of their answers. The authors are identified by college and graduation date. These comments illustrate, flesh out, or provide caveats to our discussion.

As a follow-up to the questionnaire we conducted telephone interviews with twelve of the respondents about their dance histories and the reasons for their career decisions. They are summarized in Section 14. These varied stories enrich our understanding of the economic situation of those in dance and illustrate the many ways they have responded to the challenges of a low-paid profession, which is their artistic passion.

Five hundred and thirty-four surveys were distributed and 193, or 36 percent, were returned. The distribution of surveys sent by college, year of graduation, and current residence is in Table 1 along with a summary of the responses. The distribution of the respondents corresponds closely to that of the total sample in the admittedly limited number of ways in which we are able to compare these groups. Respondents graduated from all five colleges (with a higher percentage coming from the University and a lower percentage from Amherst College.) While the FCDD officially began in 1978 the mailing list contains graduates from before that year who maintain some contact with the program. However, 75 percent of the respondents graduated in 1980 and later. Not surprisingly, a majority of the sample (44 percent) still lives in New England (35 percent in Massachusetts alone). Twenty-seven percent reside in the New York area (including New Jersey).

In 1998 about half the respondents were employed in dance, while many more indicate that they earlier had pursued careers in dance but had subsequently left the field. There are a smaller number who never worked in dance. Our statistical results shed some light on the career paths and choices these dance graduates have made both within and beyond dance. It appears that many graduates pursue careers in dance shortly after graduation, often supporting their dance through non-dance work. Over time the number actively involved in dance declines. Some, who wish to stay in dance, seek formal graduate work in the field, while many others obtain non-dance degrees and leave dance. As is true for many arts, income in dance is very low, particularly compared to potential earnings in non-dance fields. Sections 2 through 13 present our findings, Section 14 summarizes the follow-up interviews, and Appendix 1 contains a copy of the survey.

2. Demographics of the Respondents

Table 2 shows the means for the demographic questions asked on the survey, breaking these down by whether or not the respondent was employed in dance and by decade of graduation. The FCDD graduates had a mean age of 37 and very few children (less than one on average). Seventy-three percent were living with a partner. Those employed in dance were less likely to have partners who were employed full-time, perhaps in part because their partners were also working part-time in dance or some other performing art. The respondents’ interest in dance began early. The average age at which they began training was less than 9 years and over 75 percent first took lessons at age 12 or younger. The respondents are largely white (90 percent) and female (95 percent). The gender make-up of the group probably reflects both the fact that two of the five colleges are exclusively for women and the dominance of women in dance. (In the survey of artists done by the Research Center for Arts and Culture at Columbia University[1] in 1989, 75 percent of the dancers were women, as were 72 percent of choreographers studied by Netzer and Parker.) Fifty-four percent were currently employed in dance and 85 percent had some dance experience prior to 1998. Those currently employed in dance had 21 years experience on average, while those not employed in dance had six years of prior dance experience. Of those who had prior dance experience but were not employed currently in dance, 48 percent still participate in dance on an amateur basis. In all 75 percent of the respondents were engaged in dance either professionally or on an amateur basis in 1998.

3. Graduate Study

My life in dance drew me to study dance therapy, which I was exposed to in workshops as an undergrad. So I wonder if dance therapy is a dance career or not. The spirit of dance is what does the healing in dance therapy, so I believe it to be a dance oriented career though certainly not a professional, performing one. (UMASS, 1983)

We asked the respondents if they had pursued graduate work after college and to describe the nature of that work. We indentified three types of graduate work. Many respondents obtained degrees in dance, while other pursued two types of non-dance degrees: body/movement, and other professional. Graduate study in dance included an MFA or MA in dance, dance and creativity, choreography, dance education, dance history, and dance-theater. Many graduates pursued graduate studies that were body/movement-related, but were not specifically dance degrees. This type of graduate work included health and dance, dance/movement-therapy, massage therapy, exercise science, physical therapy, and fitness. Other professional graduate work was any training clearly outside the field of dance including, for example, law, business, anthropology, education, and medicine. Table 3 reports on post-collegiate educational attainment. Over half (55 percent) of the dance graduates had pursued formal graduate studies. There are differences, however, between those employed in dance and those only working elsewhere. The former were somewhat less likely to have done graduate work, and their studies were predominately in dance. Table 3 shows that 32 percent of those employed in dance pursued graduate work in dance, compared to only 13 percent of those not employed in dance. On the other hand, 50 percent of those not employed in dance had body/movement or other professional degrees, compared to only 15 percent of those employed in dance.