Andrea Deagon

I am working on a project on feminism and belly dance (a followup for my article nearly 10 years ago) and one aspect of it focuses on money. Financial gain. Control of expenditures. What we do for money, how important it is in our experience of the dance, either as students (with things like costumes and videos and music requiring substantial outlay from the family bank account) and as professionals (many big cans of worms here).

So what are people's feelings about the role of money in this dance? The problems involved with earning it, getting it, justifying expenditure, etc.? I'm interested in the old standards, too: your feelings about tipping, problems with undercutting, pay for dancers in one area as opposed to another, pay for different types of performance ...

I'm interested not so much in "I earn X for Y" but in how you reach decisions about money and how you deal with monetary isues/conflicts.

I have found that people can be on the same page in terms of dance standards, styles, etc., yet have totally different experiences of the professional/money-related side of the dance.

Thanks --

Andrea

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"I am not contradictory, I am dispersed." (Roland Barthes)

Aisha Azar

Dear Andrea,

I have been dancing for 34 years and for the past 17 years, I have earned my money with things directly involved with dance only; no outside jobs except for the occasional fill in for Ra'ed Azar when he needs a cashier to work a fair, which happens about twice a year.

Caroline_afifi

I feel that financial dependance on thyis dance is the begining of the end of the great love affair. I have seen it so many times. I also believe that it is potententially detrimental to the actual dance itself as the competition is the driving force and not the art itself or principles. I have seen women become obessesed with the lives of other dancers rather than the dance itself.
I work part time in the field of Middle Eastern dance in a variety of ways. I choose to be like this as I think I would be driven mad otherwise.

Andrea Deagon

Caroline, "Driven mad" -- that's kind of how I feel. In some of the places I have lived due to my academic day job (day career, really) I have been the only thing going, so I have been able to set the rate. It meant not getting a lot of jobs though -- it's amazing how many places can get 10 calls a night with "Is the belly dancer there tonight?" and not understand that that translates into extra income for them that offsets the cost of the dancer.

I have never depended on dance for my incomce except for a few very brief periods in my life, where I found that it did pay a lot better than academic fellowships if you had a steady job ... :-)

But I have heard horror stories about undercutting and cities in which the prices were driven down to $10 a show plus tips, making it inevitable that the dancer would have to go for tips to get paid. And since this was all there was, even the best and more artictically proficient artists were dancing for peanuts and going out for tips.

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"I am not contradictory, I am dispersed." (Roland Barthes)

Caroline_afifi

I totally agree. Also, to be very successful in business, you have to be totally focused and driven. To be focused and driven often means to not care about others or principles. Dog eat dog, rat race and that sort of thing.
These things of course contradict what we want this dance to be about and the standards we want to set or achieve.
Fusion I feel is one of the things that has grown out of the urge to keep finding a new product to sell. Sex sells so overuse of the body and the stereotype of the female image is becoming more and more important. Deeply complex and enough to drive anyone mad.

PS I have to keep apologising all over this board for my typos and terrible spellings.

Kharmine

In the history of the world, there have been rare periods when there has been more demand for art than artists to produce it. I'd be curious to know if anyone here can totally support herself just be dancing. I'm fortunate to have a husband who agrees that what I do for our home makes up for the vast difference in our earnings.

As a freelance journalist, I suspect one of the few differences between trying to make a living as a writer and making one as a dancer is that no one ever says to a dancer, "I've always thought I could do what you do if I just had the time to try it."

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What if the hokey pokey is really what it's all about?

Andrea Deagon

Kharmine, I totally agree. I remember being in a conversation with several other women about our careers (or other occupations) and as I described the research I was doing, and the fact that discovering this neat stuff was part of my job requirements, one woman told me several times, "Oh, you are just so fortunate!" OK, I don't deny it, I am fortunate in many ways, but I was a bit miffed at the time because I was thinking, "Yes, and I also worked 16 hour days and lived in dire poverty for 6 years to earn the PhD that got me to this point," and I thought that a lot more than fortune was required ...

It takes a lot to be self-employed in any field but the arts, well, you gotta love what you do more than you love, say, health insurance ...

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"I am not contradictory, I am dispersed." (Roland Barthes)

Shanazel

Oh, my dears, you are singing my song now. If I had a dollar for every time someone told me how "lucky" I was to get paid for anything from dancing to staying at home with my small children, I could treat us all to a very nice dinner. The implication, of course, is that any slackard could do what I do if they were just lucky like me.

And Kharmine, I've heard any number of people say, "Oh, anyone can belly dance; what's the big deal about shaking your butt?" Either that, or some version of, "Oh, I could NEVER dance in public" in a scandalized voice that suggests the next step is prostitution. (Hand me that paper bag, would you? Breathe, breathe.)

Back to the subject at hand, now that I am no longer hyperventilating. I never made my full living dancing, but for a couple of years in my long lost youth, it paid my rent. I accepted tips because I depended on them, but I was never sanguine about it, especially at the venues where tipping in the costume was the custom. I had to handle money very carefully in order to have enough for living expenses as well as enough to put back into dancing (costumes, music, etc.) Performing is expensive. There is a good deal in what Caroline says about financial dependence denting the love affair with dance: I lived on the ragged edge of financial disaster as a professional dancer, and having to dance for income whether I felt like it on a given evening or not was sometimes very difficult.

I teach through Parks and Recreation in my hometown, where I make a couple dollars more an hour teaching dance than I do at my morning job as a legal assistant. Sometimes I have to drag myself to class, and when my arthritis kicks in, I think surely this is my last year- but then I get to class, my students smile at me, my joints loosen up, and I am happy to be where I am. I also make enough money teaching in the course of the year to allow myself some vacations and things I would not otherwise afford, but I don't have to teach. That's good, because I live in a county that is bigger than most states with a population of only about 70,000 including rough necks, cowboys, and antelopes, so there is not a big population of belly dance students to draw on.

I don't know if any of this is of any use to you, Andrea, so I will shut up now.

Kharmine

Ah, see, I thought people would at least know that belly dancing couldn't be done by just anyone with a butt to shake! I see it's still on the same level of magical thinking that anyone can write well with half a brain and a pen or keyboard!

Perhaps the common denominator here is that few people outside any art understand just how difficult it is to do the thing well.

For that, I guess we can blame all those folks who find a gimmick and clever marketing can conceal a lack of real talent, training and hard work -- and all those rat-holes who insist that ANYTHING (no matter how stupid, pointless or incomprehensible) is art.

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What if the hokey pokey is really what it's all about?