Career Transition for Dancers: Thinking Big

Back in 2015, I attended the Career Transition for Dancers: Thinking Big panel event at the Dance UK Futures conference at Trinity Laban. It was a hugely insightful conference, and this session in particular was a huge success. The points apply to anyone currently in transition from a career in which they’ve felt a strong identity, and so it may be worth a read for those of you that are currently stuck in that liminal zone:

Chair Zoe van Zwanenberg introduced the rest of the panel, all ex-professional dancers – Isabel Mortimer, now Director of Coaching at Dancer’s Career Development, Mark Baldwin, Artistic Director of Rambert; Gail Graves, the Royal Ballet’s Head of Vocational Training, Amanda Hancox, Executive Director, Dancer Transition Resource Centre; Anne Hogan, Director of Education at Royal Academy of Dance and Ingrid Mackinnon, Dancer & Producer.

The overriding advice was the importance of ‘thinking big’. The panel encouraged dancers to ‘explore your options’ with an open mind and emphasised the fact that a life as a dancer can take you onto so many other things.

Ingrid McKinnon shared her poignant story and identified some of the factors that make it difficult for dancers making the leap out of a professional dancer career. Particularly difficult was loss of perceived identity and the resultant effect on confidence. “Dancers take direction so much that sometimes they can forget that they have a voice.”

McKinnon reminded those who are feeling lost at at the transition stage, ‘to not be afraid of seeking help.’ Members of the audience suggested that this is one of the biggest issues when facing an impending career change, the need to engage with others and the best ways of doing that. ‘Some dancers simply don’t want to engage as it can be too hard emotionally.’

Isabel Mortimer explained that it’s fundamental to ‘explore what you’re passionate about and what you will be able to sustain’ and discussed the help that a coach can provide. Sometimes this might be a simple case of reframing the question. For example, dance itself requires skills of resilience, team-work and focus at a high performance level and all of these skills translate into choreography, teaching and business as well as other arenas. The key is to ‘work out what works for you’ and ‘what you want to develop’ and also to remember that you are not ‘giving up’ your identity as a dancer. The panel and audience acknowledged that the perceived loss of identity as a dancer, along with the perceived loss of your ‘team’ for company dancers, can be some of the harder elements to navigate.

A rich, open conversation followed with a number of dancers offering their experiences of their own transitions – from dancer to mother, dancer to teacher, dancer to fundraiser. CEO of The Place, Kenneth Tharp, offered his own experience of moving from a dance career to an office-based role ‘I went from using my body as my main tool to sitting behind a desk writing annual reports’. Tharp explained how important it had been for him to acknowledge the importance of maintaining some form of physical expression in his life (sea-kayaking and tennis alongside dance).

Dame Monica Mason recalled a wonderful anecdote on the transferability of her own skills to the transport/logistics field. Using her choreographic knowledge, insight into human movement and ability to use space optimally she made some suggestions to a TFL staff member on how foot traffic at Covent Garden Tube could be better managed. The TfL employee took her suggestions on board and a week or two later the changes had been implemented. Transferable skills indeed!

For those about to transition, Anne Hogan’s advice was particularly useful “Try to think of transition as only the first step on the ladder, it makes it less scary.”

The advice proffered at this session had a profound effect on a number of attendees. Discussing the session with them in the lunch queue, they were excited about what they had just heard – “it’s good to know its not just you” ‘it helps when people are honest about their experience - that was so powerful’.

Dancers, at all levels, can find out more about support available at Dancer’s Career Development.

Adapted from the original article published on Londondance.com.