On Dance/NYC's Dance Industry Census

The New York City area is home to thousands of professional dancers on working Broadway, as company members, as teachers, and as freelance performers. What are dance careers like in NYC, right now? Our guest is Candace Thompson-Zachery, Co-Executive Director of Dance/NYC, an advocacy group for dancers, with details from their NYC Dance Industry Census, and their campaign to address industry challenges. For more, visit dance.nyc.

Episode Transcript

(00:02):
Welcome to Get Connected with Nina delRio, a weekly conversation about fitness,
health and happenings in our community onone Oho six point seven Light FM.
Good morning, and thanks for listeningto get connected. New York City is
arguably not only the best place tobe a dance fan, but to be
a dancer. Our area is hometo thousands of professional dancers working on Broadway,

(00:24):
as company members, working freelance.But what do dance careers actually look
like in New York Right now,our guest is Candace Thompson Zachary, co
executive director of Dance and YC,an advocacy group for dancers, on what
they discovered in their census, onhow New York City dancers are doing off
stage. We'll also talk about howDance NYC is responding. Candace, thank

(00:46):
you for being on the show.Thank you for having me. I'm glad
to be here. You can findout more about the organization and the census
at Dance dot YC. Can youtell us a little bit more, Candace
before we talk about the census,What Dance NYC does. Yes, we
are a service organization for the danceindustry promoting the appreciation, practice and knowledge

(01:07):
of dance in New York City andthe metro area, and we do that
through many of our programs. Wehave regranting programs where we give money to
or redistribute money to dancers. Wedo research and advocacy, we supporting the
kind of cases that we need tomake sure that dance is funded and taking
care of. And then some ofthe technology, visibility and convening that we

(01:27):
do around dance to make sure thatdance workers are connected to the best knowledge
that they that we have to supporttheir careers. So the Survey State of
NYC Dance twenty twenty three findings fromthe Dance Industry Census, actually completed about
a year ago. What did youwant to find out with this survey and
who did you speak with? Whodid you survey? Yes, we wanted

(01:48):
to get a better sense of whatthe economic realities of dance workers and dance
organizations and entities were in New YorkCity. What were they facing, what
kind of decisions were they making?How many jobs did they have? Are
they traveling long distances you know?Are they funding their work from their own
pockets? Are they fundraising to supporttheir work? We wanted to get a

(02:09):
good sense of what people were experiencingand how they were making their work so
that we could address some of thoseconcerns through our programs and through our advocacy
to other partners. One of thefirst takeaways is about diversity, but it
also has to do with economics.So dance is more diverse than the arts
workforce, but less diverse as awhole. Yeah, so we compared.

(02:32):
So what I should say is thatwe do this type of study periodically,
and so this is the fifth iterationof that study. And with that finding,
we compared what we found in termsof demographics of the people that were
surveyed and then compared it to ourlast one, which was in twenty sixteen.

(02:55):
So basically we were able to see, Okay, we have more BIPOK
representing now and dance. We havemore millennial representation, which is not was
not the key the LACKAMEI we surveyed. We have a drop off after the
millennial age. We have a bitmore disabled representation in dance. But when
we compare those numbers to New YorkCity as a whole, and we know

(03:17):
how diverse New York City is,our dance demographics don't reflect or don't correlate
to what we know New York Cityto be, and so in our sense,
then our industry should mirror the diversityand breadth of what New York City
has. People in the arts ingeneral, I think, and I believe
you would agree, often have supportfrom their families or as the sense of

(03:39):
shows, they have savings, orthey might not be able to pursue it.
A lot of people come to artswork with a backup plan because you
need that. Did you find ordo you have any information about how dance
compares to other arts workers, theater, musicians, those sorts of things.
As far as diversity, not often, but some of what we found,

(04:00):
or the fact that a lot ofpeople are working multiple jobs outside of dance
to support themselves. Right over halfare working jobs outside of dance, and
up to half have at least fourjobs outside of what they're doing. People
are on the organization entity side,they are raising money from either the government,
private philanthropy to some extent, theyhave some like individuals owner basis,

(04:24):
and or people are using money thattheir work getting from other jobs to support
their dance making. So that's someof what we found. We also looked
at the fact that, yeah,by talk and immigrant dance workers have less
access to savings, so of course, like they are more at risk if
something were to happen, they getinjured, they lose one of their sources
of income. In terms of accessthe health insurance, that was a place

(04:47):
where we found that we did finda high ish number over sixty percent of
dance worker surveyed had access the healthinsurance, but some of those had it
through a partner, through their parentsor some other sort of the sidel like
them having it directly. So yeah, there's just a number of ways that
that story gets crafted, Like peopleare able to continue their work in dance

(05:12):
from based on their access to varioustypes of either resources or finances. You
did find that over half of dancersare educators. They teach to some level,
whether they teach courses or they teachat the university level or in high
schools. What other sectors are dancersmost deeply connected to. Yeah, education,
of course was a really really bigone. And I remember even in

(05:33):
our meetings. We had an advisorygroup that we worked with when we were
developing the narrative for the report andanalyzing the data, and someone commented,
yeah, you know, in someways, we could almost say that dance
is an education sector or an educationindustry. Dance was also closely linked with
health and wellness. A lot ofpeople work as personal trainers, lafage therapists,

(05:58):
some people working directly like in healthcare, and there's or other kind of
medical providers. So the health andwellness was a big one. And the
last one was leisure on hospitality.You know, people are working as waiters,
hosts in nightlife. So those threesectors were the ones where we found
the most interconnection, and especially witheducation. A lot of the dance entities,

(06:21):
their offerings are largely education based offerings. Right, They're offering workshops,
masterclasses, and a lot of theirwork is also taking place in education institutions.
Right they're performing at the auditorium ofa school, they have a residency
at a school. That's how they'reable to rehearse while they maybe offer our

(06:41):
class or to the school system.So people are like enmeshing themselves in on
the industries as also another way toensure their survival. Our guest is Candice
Thompson Zachary. She's co executive directorof Dance NYC, their organization promoting the
knowledge appreciation practice and performance of dancein the metropolitan New York City area.

(07:02):
You can find out more at dancedot NYC. You're listening to get connected
on one oh six point seven lightFM. I'm Mina del Rio. So
a little bit about the nitty gray. Let's talk about money. So,
the average hourly rate, which isin the Census for a dancer is twenty
two dollars per hour. You talkedabout commuting. There are classes, of

(07:23):
course, you got to pay forYou got to you know, come to
those rehearsals sometimes unpaid. Can youtalk about the unpaid work for dancers and
how that impacts that effective hourly wageafter you go through all these other things.
Yeah, it's tough. And theother thing that I should note about
that twenty two dollars an hour wageis that it includes other type of work

(07:43):
that's not just rehearsing or performing.So it includes the people who work as
administrators, photographers, musicians. It'snot just dancers on parographers, which is
actually why we think that that numberis actually high compared to what most dancers
and performers make, if that makessense. But yes, the things like

(08:05):
the labor that is unseen is thetime people spend in rehearsal or in the
gym, or working on their craftthat is outside of like paid or in
some cases a lot of cases unpaidrehearsal time. The kind of work that
people or investment people put into theirphysical appearances, right, getting their nails
done, here done, stocking upon their own kinds of costumes because a

(08:26):
lot of dance work don't provide costumes, so people are providing their own costumes.
Some of that is paid, right, you know, some contract includes
some kind of payment for offering ofcostumes. Others don't, and that's a
sadly or you know, it's thepractice that is common doesn't include and a
lot of times commuting to and fromthose places doesn't include the kind of massages,

(08:50):
physical therapy. What happens if youget injured and you're just a freelance
worker and maybe you get injured outsideof your actual jobs, Now your work
is affected. So there are alot of things that aren't included or factored
in in the kind of pay thatdance workers get. So how do dance
workers say they feel in the sensesabout their profession? And this is one

(09:13):
of the things that I mean,it is surprising to see as a statistic
or as a fact. So manypeople felt fulfilled and committed to their work
right despite the kind of hardship thatthey experienced. They believe that their work
in dance is a long term career, a long term lifestyle, and they

(09:33):
are committed to continuing it despite thehardship. That doesn't excuse the fact that
it's not our responsibility, all ofour responsibilities to try to change the conditions
under which dance work happens so thatour workers could be better valued and better
protected. But also a lot ofwhat came up in some of the roundtable

(09:54):
discussions that Dance and YC posted wereabout people talking about the conditions that they
have to work under and the thingsthat they wish were different in dance,
including how they're treated, how they'rerespected, how their contracts are structured,
the difficulties with getting and maintaining fundingand attracting donors and donations, the kind

(10:16):
of issues people have with finding affordablespace and retaining talents, especially people who
are running entities in an organization.So there's a lot that people are tracing,
and yet still a lot dance workersare committed to their craft, so
based on all that information, you'velaunched Dance NYC has launched our New York
City Dance, a campaign that youknow is going to act on these things.

(10:39):
What is that The campaign is ourway of distilling a lot of the
information that we found in the reportinto these three large issue areas. The
first one being that dance is notvalued or protected and that we need to
find ways to ensure that it is. The second is that dance is financially
unsustainable, and we talked a littlebit about that already together. And then

(11:00):
the third is that the dance industryis lagging in terms of justice, equity
and inclusions some other representation that wetalked about, but also the kind of
difference and access for historically disinvested communities. And how we lay out those issues
is by looking at the facts ofwhat supports that claim, like why we
know this is real for dance.And then what we also lay out are

(11:24):
the ways that different systems impact thoseissues, Right, So in terms of
financial and sustainability, the larger systemsthat affect that are like how much funding
is available at the government level,right, And so what we try to
urge people to do is to leveragetheir civic responsibility to weigh on or influence
those systems, right like do yourcity count The representatives know that you are

(11:46):
a dance worker India district and thatthey should support our own culture funding because
that is important to you and youare a voter or a citizen. So
outside of dance, what can peoplewho are fans can they do to support
Yeah, they can hire dancers oninclude dancing their communities or their organization,
making sure that they are treated wellwith care and that there is financial money

(12:11):
attached to the opportunities that they get. Ensure that dances are strong presence in
the schools in their district. Weneed dance to be in our education system
so we have future supporters and practitionersof dance. People need to look at
their representatives and make sure that theyare also supporting ars and culture. And
then lastly, volunteer and donate theirtime to dance organizations, especially those of
byclock, immigrant or disabled darted.One of the other things you're going to

(12:35):
do, just to wrap up,You're going to launch the Dance Workforce Directory
Hub this fall. So I guessthe way for people to get work and
offer also to offer work perhaps yes, So people can list the kind of
services that they offer, where theyare, what they specialize in, and
just another place to create more visibilityfor dance workers in New York City and
the mature area. There's so muchmore on the website. It's a fascinating

(12:58):
census. Dance dot NYC. CandiceThompson Zachary of Dance NYC, who's been
our guest, thank you for beingon Get Connected. Thank you so much,
glad to be here. This hasbeen Get Connected with Nina del Rio
on one oh six point seven lightFm. The views and opinions of our
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(13:22):
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