Assessing the Contexts of Professionalism

LORIEN HOUSE is a dancer-turned-lawyer currently based in Albuquerque, New Mexico. She shares the sense of insecurity she experienced pursuing dance professionally in comparison with her later career, and the fraught questions of validation and self-worth it accompanied. Her responses are part of a larger series dissecting what it means […]

February 12, 2018  |  Read Article

The Many Meanings of ‘Professional’

CHRISTIAN BURNS – a dancer, teacher and choreographer in the San Francisco Bay Area and founder of burnsWORK – muses on what professionalism means, the permutability of definitions, and how it varies dancer to dancer. His responses are part of a larger series dissecting what it means to be a […]

February 8, 2018  |  Read Article

The Camino of Pursuing Dance

LA EMI is a flamenco dancer in Santa Fe, New Mexico. She shares her view of flamenco as a camino, a path, rather than a destination at professionalism. Her responses are part of a larger series dissecting what it means to be a professional dancer. To read other perspectives on the […]

February 5, 2018  |  Read Article

Challenging Dance’s Status Quo

MADISON PAGE, a self-described dancer movement person in Portland, Oregon, dissects not only the term “professional” with regards to dance, but what dance is and how our social systems shape how we relate to it. Her responses are part of a larger series dissecting what it means to be a […]

February 1, 2018  |  Read Article

Dance is Definitely Work

ERIN MALLEY has worked as a dancer, performer, choreographer, director, video designer and filmmaker. In 2015, she and her husband Doruk Golcu began teaching and performing Argentine Tango internationally, and Erin took her film projects on the road with her. Here, she shares her staunch perspective that getting paid is […]

January 29, 2018  |  Read Article