> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://spotlight.adancemag.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # What Dance Artists Can Teach Us About Precarity - URL: https://spotlight.adancemag.com/what-dance-artists-can-teach-us-about-precarity/ - Published: 2026-11-04T10:16:03.000Z - Updated: 2026-11-04T10:16:03.000Z - Description: By Kimberly Prosa – As AI reshapes workers’ conditions, dancers are already living in the future economy. Building a livable life without stability starts with small decisions and collective solidarity. - Author: a Dance Mag - Online - Tags: Essays, Perspectives by **Kimberly Prosa. PhD** There is a moment, somewhere between exhaustion and decision, when the body registers the effects of the system, often subconsciously, without the time afforded to process it properly or, often, even name it. It happens on a train between jobs, or in the middle of the night, when a surge of cortisol prompts the brain to calculate whether all the work cobbled together for the next month will be enough to hold it all together. > ***"A dancer’s time is stretched, split, traded, and often given away."*** For dancers without an affluent background, this condition is a way of life. Work is rarely stable, consistent, or sustainable, and for the majority, never sufficient as a stand-alone profession. A dancer’s day is assembled from fragments: rehearsal, teaching, administrative or service-industry work, all managed alongside the constant, uncounted labor of maintaining a career with no fixed structure. Taking classes, staying in shape, and tending to injuries with subpar or nonexistent healthcare are burdens the dancer must manage and pay for in many ways. Without support from family, inherited wealth, or a spouse, the dancer is torn between two worlds. The economic reality of survival, forget stability, is juxtaposed with audition calls that often require maintaining full-time training while rehearsing three times a week, with only a commitment to paid performances. A dancer’s time is stretched, split, traded, and often given away. The body carries that accumulation, and eventually, over the course of months, years, or even decades, it always catches up in one way or another. As dance artists, I think many of us entered this profession with a certain expectation of struggle. Loved ones and peers warned many of us about the starving-artist lifestyle. We were encouraged to have a backup plan and a path to a ‘stable’ career when dancing is over. We accepted this condition by default, shaped by systems that rely on flexibility while withholding stability (Menger,1999). > ***"The working class of their generation believed that education was the only path out of poverty and instability, and many of my generation saddled themselves with student loan debt in pursuit of that path."*** One very early morning, as a young dancer on the subway headed to my first job of the day, I found myself really looking at who was on the very full train—blue-collar workers, as shown by their attire, and others with no obvious indicators of their profession. But what made a clear impression was that the train was FULL. Not with partygoers wrapping up their nights, but people headed to some form of work, large coffees in the hands of many. All of us were hustling, and I’m pretty sure most of us weren't salaried employees. I thought about my father, a skilled tradesman, with the highest credentials in welding, who often endured bouts of unemployment at the whim of plants and factories closing in rural America. The working class of their generation believed that education was the only path out of poverty and instability, and many of my generation saddled themselves with student loan debt in pursuit of that path. Over time, even my friends who had taken the ‘stable jobs’ in tech, education, and even healthcare began to struggle with precarity. They took on second, and sometimes third, jobs as the gig economy came into full bloom after the 2008 economic collapse. Some scholars have argued that the collapse created a calculated opportunity to drive a larger shift toward a gig economy, which some scholars contend was modeled on the unstable, precarious nature of arts work (Ducret, 2017). While instability is not new for artists, the expansion of this model far and wide across all sectors of employment, resembles what artists have long navigated: short-term contracts, self-managed careers, multiple income streams, and the expectation that individuals will absorb all the risks of contract employment, which, in varying periods of time, were once borne by institutions (Standing, 2011). The language has shifted to flexibility, innovation, and autonomy, but the fundamental structure has not changed, just merely redistributed and largely outsourced to the individual. > ***“we must no longer embrace or romanticize the impoverished artist's life as an aspirational model for the neoliberal gig worker; instead, we weaponize our survival skills to build solidarity among other precariat workers.”*** In this sense, dancers are not behind the new economy. They are ahead of it, with decades of rehearsal in navigating precarity. However, we must no longer embrace or romanticize the impoverished artist's life as an aspirational model for the neoliberal gig worker; instead, we weaponize our survival skills to build solidarity among other precariat workers. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/5e/52/5e5211c4-8c92-4a71-a877-197e1314ad5f/content/images/2026/10/going-to-work-l-s-lowry-855e1a.jpg) L S Lowry, *Going to Work*, 1943 ## **The Myth of the Exceptional Artist** --- A necessary function of keeping dancers, and artists more broadly, accepting the wages and conditions of their industry has historically been largely through exploiting their identity in connection to their art form. By positioning artists as exceptional talents rather than workers, the industry glamorizes itself as an exclusive space, persuading dancers to feel grateful for occupying an elite industry and a unique profession. This manipulation of labeling the pursuit of one’s talents and interests as a privileged passion creates the conditions for silence and, coupled with a fear of irreplaceability, makes for an oppressive environment that persuades artists to quietly accept the wages and conditions of their industry, largely without complaint, with the narrative of exceptionalism hanging over them. In creating this culture of silence, it also fulfills the vision of an elitist space, where only people with real economic privilege can pursue artistic careers, unburdened by the need to provide for themselves through the wages they earn. > ***"when the whole of the arts is encapsulated in the romantic notion of the bohemian artist, struggle can be buried deeper..."*** Furthermore, when the whole of the arts is encapsulated in the romantic notion of the bohemian artist, struggle can be buried deeper, and artists can become even more defensive about their life choices in pursuing creative professions, reinforcing hyper-independence and overworking out of shame about ‘choosing to be a poor artist.’ But suppressing workers' wages is a choice. A choice made by those who stand to profit off their labor, like any other worker in any other industry. This psychological sabotage works well on artists trained from an early age to divorce the success and skill of their talents from the need to earn a living, and to accept promises of exposure and symbolic payment tokens as compensation, so that economic failure is internalized as a lack of talent or personal failure. Often, what reinforces these beliefs within the dancer are larger societal trickle-down notions that the arts are superfluous, not essential to everyday life, and always first on the chopping block for funding cuts. If you live in a system whose government is deeply embedded with corporations, and has found it can extract profits from the workers, self-abandoning in an industry that has convinced them is disposable and nonessential, it can be easy to internalize the belief you’re privileged and lucky just to be there, for however long it lasts. > ***"I do not think the arts need to justify their existence. They have intrinsic value, and I would argue increasingly so in a world where tech oligarchs are rapidly moving to create an A.I. world that is already de-centering the human experience."*** As an artist myself, I do not think the arts need to justify their existence. They have intrinsic value, and I would argue increasingly so in a world where tech oligarchs are rapidly moving to create an A.I. world that is already de-centering the human experience. However, if we do need to justify our existence and our value within society, we’ve been doing it for years. Countless studies show the positive impacts of the arts on the individual and the larger community. We can look at measurements of health and well-being, community development, and education for starters. But often the only one that really matters is its economic contribution. Time and again, we continue to demonstrate this through the economic value generated by the arts. And yet, despite our ability to do so, we still need to constantly defend the arts as a legitimate profession and struggle to recognize, value, and ultimately adequately compensate the artists whose labor builds and sustains the sector. Without the societal agreement that dance is labor, both within the dance world and the larger economy, dancers are then subject to the same kind of exploitation or struggles to assert autonomy over their bodies, time, and work as any other laborer. When we enable a society to discount and exploit the labor of the individual creating the product we love or the services or experiences and connections we value, or even worse, romanticize their struggle, we dehumanize their experiences. When it comes to dancers and other performing artists, we enact a fascinating blind spot: we enjoy and experience the art form through the very bodies we are trained to commodify and neglect. We hide the uncomfortable truth that within that body performing before us is a person who may, in the quiet recesses of their mind, be worried the apartment will be locked when they get home for failure to pay rent, or hoping they can make it out in time to get to the food pantry before the healthier items are gone. These are real fears I’ve heard from dancers in numerous interviews I’ve conducted for my academic work examining artist wellbeing in the context of their precarity. > ***"Peppered with notions that making art is special and transcendental, and you are lucky to be there, while being reinforced since a young age to neglect your needs by pushing through countless injuries, pain, and abuse."*** By situating artists outside the realm of normal labor, we create an island for the arts community unto itself, where they remain disconnected from other laborers through a false narrative that doing something you love means you should sacrifice and suffer for it. Peppered with notions that making art is special and transcendental, and you are lucky to be there, while being reinforced since a young age to neglect your needs by pushing through countless injuries, pain, and abuse. Then, within the industry itself, competition can create further divisions, where fear of being replaced in a culture of disposability makes prioritizing one's own well-being a weakness and a personal failure that could cost a career rather than a boundary to be enforced. In this way, instability and self-neglect are not a temporary phase on the way to a stable career, but an embedded structure of the profession itself. It creates conditions in which the arts workers self-police, isolate, and self-abandon out of fear. These are the exact conditions needed to ensure arts workers won’t organize within themselves, let alone with the larger working class. Passion for a profession should be treated as a perk, not payment, and certainly not something you should pay for with your well-being and financial stability. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/5e/52/5e5211c4-8c92-4a71-a877-197e1314ad5f/content/images/2026/10/Rene-Magritte-the-false-mirror.jpg) René Magritte, **The False Mirror*, 1928 ## **The Future of Work is Already Here** --- With the numerous speculations and conversations on the future of work in the age of A.I., artists already know and live that future. While some optimistically speculate about an age of abundance or a renaissance rebirth in valuing art made and expressed by humans, the likelihood of that utopia without an intentional plan and financial investment feels highly improbable, and we are much more likely to be part of what Silicon Valley has referenced as the permanent underclass. Nevertheless, we must keep fighting for a humane, just, abundant world, build solidarity amongst one another, and remember that we are workers like anyone else; our artistic labor has value, we have value, and engaging with the wider working class is essential to our survival. We must offer our skills to the vision of the world we want to see while noticing and validating the small steps and decisions we can make every day to protect ourselves and change the accepted norms for the ones who come alongside us, and after us. > ***"it's an ongoing process of small micro-decisions, adjustments here and there when possible—choosing which work to take and which to refuse, even when refusal carries risk—deciding how much time to give one project without undermining another..."*** In the immediacy, if building a financial future, or finding stability, is not possible, then something else has to be built. Not in its place, exactly, but alongside its absence. A way of continuing that does not depend on conditions aligning, because they rarely do. A way of holding together a life that is made up of parts that do not naturally cohere. This isn’t done with a single decision; it's an ongoing process of small micro-decisions, adjustments here and there when possible—choosing which work to take and which to refuse, even when refusal carries risk—deciding how much time to give one project without undermining another and learning how to move between roles without losing a sense of continuity. Performer, teacher, administrator, worker in another field. Each one necessary, none sufficient on its own. If we cannot free ourselves from the system yet, we can recalibrate our relationship to it in the small moves that we can make. It’s a constant reworking of how we distribute time, energy, and attention. A recognition that something will always be under-resourced, that something will always be deferred. The question becomes not how to eliminate this imbalance, but how to live within it without ourselves collapsing. And how to stay connected to the body, the self, without staying chronically connected to the stress and fear of survival mode. For many dancers, this involves redefining what counts as a sustainable life. Not one that is fully secured, but one that is livable. One in which the work that matters can continue to exist, even if it cannot fully support the conditions of living on its own. This often requires accepting compromises that are rarely acknowledged as such. Taking work outside the field. Reducing time spent on creative practice to sustain it over the long term. Letting go of certain expectations of progression or recognition. Determining what conditions you can live with. > ***"Enough agency to allow for selective engagement, the ability to decide, within limits, what is worth continuing and what must be let go."*** This is not a matter of simply making individual choices; it’s about responding to structural conditions that limit what is possible and searching within these constraints for some semblance of agency. Enough agency to allow for selective engagement, the ability to decide, within limits, what is worth continuing and what must be let go. What is worth sacrificing and exhausting, and what isn’t. Over time, these decisions accumulate into a way of living that is not fully stable, but not entirely unstructured either. Through the accumulation of small decisions of agency, dancers can make small inroads toward some aspect of daily wellbeing. This will never be a fixed state, but something assembled daily, weekly, or monthly through ongoing decisions and practices that keep the work meaningful, even when it is not materially sufficient. This is done through cultivating relationships, routines, and forms of attention that support continuation, even when they do not resolve instability. > ***"This approach and valuation of which boundaries are set, and which facets of wellbeing are prioritized, will look different for everyone navigating this space."*** This approach and valuation of which boundaries are set, and which facets of wellbeing are prioritized, will look different for everyone navigating this space. We all have different capacities to absorb risk, take on additional work, or remain in a field that does not provide consistent support or career stability. Access to financial resources, social networks, and institutional recognition shapes what forms of continuation and lifestyle viability are possible (Banks, 2017). What appears as resilience at one level may, at another, reflect an unequal distribution of burden. Constructing a life under these imposed conditions is not about simple adaptation or lowering the expectations for the quality of our lives. It is about ongoing negotiations of the terms of engagement. It means to decide, again and again, that the work is still worth doing, even when the conditions do not fully justify that decision. And to find ways, however provisional, to make that decision livable. In connection with the body, it means committing to a lived experience in which the body can detect, hold, connect, and process the experience, supporting us in making those re-commitments and decisions. It can give us the resolve to preserve our wellbeing, sense of self, and dignity, so we can find the reserve energy to align ourselves with bigger movements of solidarity toward the world-building needed to heal and sustain us all. --- ### **References** Banks, M. (2017). Creative justice: Cultural industries, work and inequality. Rowman & Littlefield. Ducret, A., Glauser, A., Moeschler, O., & Rolle, V. (2017). Introduction: Artistic work as a “laboratory” of labor market deregulation? Swiss Journal of Sociology, 43(2), 239–252.[ ](https://doi.org/10.1515/sjs-2017-0014?utm%5Fsource=chatgpt.com)[https://doi.org/10.1515/sjs-2017-0014](https://doi.org/10.1515/sjs-2017-0014?utm%5Fsource=chatgpt.com) Legrand, D., & Ravn, S. (2009). Perceiving subjectivity in bodily movement: The case of dancers. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 8(3), 389–408.[ ](https://doi.org/10.1007/s11097-009-9135-5?utm%5Fsource=chatgpt.com)[https://doi.org/10.1007/s11097-009-9135-5](https://doi.org/10.1007/s11097-009-9135-5?utm%5Fsource=chatgpt.com) Menger, P.-M. (1999). Artistic labor markets and careers. Annual Review of Sociology, 25, 541–574.[ ](https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.soc.25.1.541?utm%5Fsource=chatgpt.com)[https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.soc.25.1.541](https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.soc.25.1.541?utm%5Fsource=chatgpt.com) Standing, G. (2011). The precariat: The new dangerous class. Bloomsbury Academic. --- about the writer [![CTA Image](https://storage.ghost.io/c/5e/52/5e5211c4-8c92-4a71-a877-197e1314ad5f/content/images/2026/10/Kimberly-profile-1.jpeg)](https://www.kimberlyprosa.com/?ref=spotlight.adancemag.com) ****Kimberly Prosa** holds a PhD in Dance Studies from the University of Auckland. She is an Actor, Conservatory-Trained Dancer, and Choreographer based in Auckland, New Zealand. Her artistic practice is grounded in rigorous classical training while embracing choreography as a medium for exploring the complexity and contradictions of the human experience [Website ](https://www.kimberlyprosa.com/?ref=spotlight.adancemag.com)