Aleksandra Webb and Doris Ruth Eikhof
Stirling Management School, University of Stirling
Dancing between agony and ecstasy: Analysing the dance sector as a career field.
Submission to 6th Nordic Working Life Conference, Elsinore, Denmark, April 25th-27th 2012
Special stream: Agony and Ecstasy: Working Life in the Arts, Culture, and Creative Industries
In recent years the working lives of creative workers have attracted growing academic
attention (e.g. McKinlay and Smith 2009, Eikhof and Warhurst 2010), particularly exploring how
creative workers combine project-based employment contracts into a professional career (for an
overview see Mathieu forthcoming 2012). However, current research on creative careers
predominantly focuses on film and TV (e.g. Mathieu 2006; Jones and DeFillippi 1996) and mainly
analyses reputation building (e.g. Alvarez et al. 2005; Faulkner und Anderson 1987; Jones 2002) and
networking (e.g. Blair 2001; Grugulis and Stoyanova 2009; Randle and Culkin 2009).
This paper seeks to extend such research by analysing the performing arts, particularly the
dance sector, as a career field in which creative workers enact their working lives. The performing
arts have long played a key role in the creative industries in Northern and Central Europe (e.g. Bille
1995, 1997; Wenner 2008). In addition, as Wulff (1998) points out in her comparison of a Swedish
dance company with companies in Germany, UK and US, the dance industry is a prime example of
genuinely transnational work: Despite national and cultural differences about
aesthetics, performance practices and the organisation of work remain similar due to the ‘universal
language’ of dance. Analyses of the dance sector as a career field thus promise not only insight into
creative work, but also into working lives in globalised worlds of work (Becker 1982).
Applying a theory of practice perspective (Bourdieu 1977, 1993), the paper analyses the dance
sector as a transnational career field in which institutions, education and employment systems,
organisational and individual actors, rules, logics and perceptions shape the professional trajectories
of individual dancers. Dancers’ career experiences range from ecstatic to agonising, influenced by
phenomena that both enable and constrain development of careers within and outside the dance
sector. While some of these phenomena appear to be linked to the ephemeral nature of dance and
the volatility of the physical capital of dancers that constitutes the art form, others are merely signs
of inequalities prevailing in the creative sectors in general, such as the (ab)use of artistic intrinsic
motivation in exploitative manners that undermine fairness of employment and quality of work.
The paper reports initial findings from a UK-based study into dancers’ career and working
lives. Primary data is drawn from interviews with industry experts from dance companies,
government and industry bodies and a small number of ex-dancers. Secondary data comprises
industry reports, blueprints and on-line proceedings from the international symposia on career
changes in dance. Interview transcripts and secondary data were coded and analysed using QRS
Nvivo 9.
Analysing the dance sector as a career field provides valuable insights into the rules and
mechanisms of a transnational world of cultural work and into their impact on dancers’ working
lives. It will also provide the background for further research exploring the heterogeneity and
homogeneity of working in dance across different nations (Wulff 1998), for instance focusing on the
differences in public funding for dance companies in Northern and Central European versus AngloSaxon countries.
* Full references can be provided on request *
Contact: Aleksandra Webb, a.k.webb@stir.ac.uk
Dr Doris Ruth Eikhof, d.r.eikhof@stir.ac.uk
Stirling Institute for Socio-Management,
Stirling Management School, University of Stirling
Stirling, FK9 4LA, Scotland, UK