My Plea to Not Work for Free

If you’re a dance artist, please don’t work for free. When choreographers don’t pay their dancers it feeds the entire broken system under which we are forced to operate. When dancers work for free it undermines his or her value to the fullest extent. As a dancer, I know that money is tight. As a choreographer, it’s even tighter. How can I afford to pay my dancers for performance let alone rehearsals too? (sidebar: Im a solo artist, but you get what I’m saying). There is something so deseprate about working for literally no money, and it sends a simple message loud and clear to the world: we’re not worth it, and neither is our art. And yet, if you were to ask a choreographer or dancer if he or she felt that way about their dance, they could most likely find its value and share that in a somewhat articulate way.