I know that for a lot of dancers I’m preaching to the choir here, but I thought I’d start a series of posts about professionalism in dance. As I work for a professional institute in my day job, I find it interesting to think about this for dance too. So I’m going to start with the topic of money…….

A friend of mine who’s a tattoo artist recently told me that there’s a saying in her industry “Good tattoos aren’t cheap, and cheap tattoos aren’t good”. This can be applied to performing artists, and dancers among them. While there will be some variance between individual dancers and what they charge, normally there is a rough going rate for an area, that most professional dancers will respect. If you come across somebody who is charging significantly less, then there’s normally a reason for that. We call this undercutting and don’t really approve of it, as it’s unprofessional behaviour. It also brings the overall value of what we offer down. If one person is willing to charge £30 for a set, and the going rate is actually £100, then people start asking all the other dancers why they are charging £100 when somebody else is prepared to do it for £30. While the other dancers are unlikely to go down to £30, if enough pressure is put on a dancer by enough potential clients, they may drop down to say £80 and our services get a little cheaper, and we are valued a little less.

There is more to whether or not you are a professional than whether you charge for your services, it’s also about professional behaviour, and valuing what you are worth. If you come across somebody who isn’t doing that, then how can you be sure that they will have a professional attitude towards their preparation, their dance skill, their presentation and their time keeping? Sometimes a cheaper price comes at a cost.

Often our potential customers can question why we charge the amount we do for what seems like only a few minutes work. The reason for that is that we aren’t charging for only a few minutes work. The dancing that we present at a wedding, party, dinner or other event is the end product. On the day we perform we don’t just work for the length of the set, our work starts when we start to get ready. For the dancer the process of putting on make up, doing your hair, getting in to costume, getting to the venue, warming up, performing, and then doing it all in reverse can be several hours long, so we aren’t just charging for X number of minutes. In addition to this, the work we do for a performance isn’t just on the day we perform. Before the day of the performance arrives we plan our sets, rehearse them, maybe even choreograph new material. That’s a lot of hours work, for a few minutes performance, but without that work, those few minutes of professional entertainment wouldn’t happen.

It goes further than this though. We wear costumes that are expensive, make up isn’t cheap and neither is a good hair cut, these are all factors in our services that we would be pulled up on if they were wrong. A bellydancer doesn’t turn up to a wedding and perform with unwashed hair in jeans and a t shirt. Looking the part costs money, and this is all factored into the price. It goes even further than that though because looking the part is only part of it, we also have to be able to dance. Most professional dancers have spent years, and a lot of money on learning how to dance in the first place. This should also go in to our price.

So lets go back to those dancers who charge different amounts of money. It may not be the case that the dancer who charges £30 is going to turn up late with a poor quality costume, and perform badly, but I would wonder why they are charging so little, and wonder if maybe they haven’t put the time, effort and money in to their dance that the dancer who charges more has, and then wonder if the service I am going to get will even be worth the £30 they are charging. Again, sometimes a cheaper price comes at a cost.

Good dancers aren’t cheap, and generally speaking, cheap dancers aren’t good. Remember that, whether you are a dancer working out her prices, or a punter looking for a dancer for your party.