Ballet Dancers’ Next Move: Union Organizing

Lauren Post, like most professional ballet dancers, began her career as a toddler. At 13, she left for dance boarding school, and then worked professionally for 18 years with the American Ballet Theater (ABT) and Atlanta Ballet. With an “all-consuming” career, she said, thinking about life outside of ballet wasn’t ever considered until it was time to leave. However, once it was, Post was left without help or support from the company with which she had spent her life.

Now, facing the inevitable early retirement around age 35 that dancers face due to physical constraints, she’s facing a labor market that doesn’t recognize the value of dancers without formal educational backgrounds.

“Dancers are some of the hardest workers that you can meet, and anyone I know who’s in a management position—who has hired dancers in the past—raves about how focused and hardworking former dancers are and willing to go above and beyond,” Post said. Now director of the Minnesota Dance School, Post received mentorship from Second Act, a nonprofit organization dedicated to career transition, which was fortunate. because ABT lacked the necessary job-retraining support.

Alexandra Basmagy, another former ballet dancer with ABT who retired last spring after more than a decade, has seen increased advocacy from younger dancers pushing for better conditions in a constant, physical job in her role with the union negotiation committee. She attributes this to more value placed on work-life balance following the pandemic. She is also seeing a broader cultural shift in the next generation of dance, with newer members starting to think sooner about end-of-career support.

Like many industries, ballet has seen a rise in unionization over the past five years—especially after the pandemic, when ballet dancers faced unprecedented job insecurity. According to DanceUSA, the unemployment rate for dancers more than quadrupled between 2019 and 2020 as consumer spending on admissions dropped by more than $30 billion. In ballet, over the last eight years, 11 dance companies, one touring production, and the faculty at the School of American Ballet have unionized for the first time.

Their national labor union, the American Guild of Musical Artists, has built on this momentum by connecting dance companies to help learn from each other. Contract negotiations have brought higher pension contributions, mandated rest times, and living wages for a job that requires years of training. Transition support, such as mentors and internships, are not yet in these contracts, but AGMA often connects dancers with outside nonprofits such as the Entertainment Community Fund, formerly known as the Actors Fund, which provides career counseling and grants. The culture in the dance studio has also seen improvements, such as ending language that implies power imbalances between dancers and those formerly called “ballet masters.”

Griff Braun, AGMA’s National organizing director and a former ballet dancer, has seen younger dancers passionate about a good career leading that push. “Forming a union is an act of love in a sense,” Braun said. “If you hated the place you worked you would just leave. It’s people who want to stay that want to make it better who form a union. I think that’s an important thing for people to keep in mind and I wish some of our employers would recognize that sooner that these artists are doing this not to hurt the company but to help the company.”

In 2005, a strike during the primary revenue-earning show, The Nutcracker, almost closed the Washington Ballet company. When dancers rejected a contract proposal, all performances were canceled. It lost about a million dollars in one week, which for a medium-sized company could have been fatal. Ticket sales were estimated to be 64 percent of annual revenue, the president of the ballet’s board of directors told The Washington Post. During the time, dancers said rehearsals for The Nutcracker were grueling and led to injuries. An agreement wasn’t reached to end the strike until the following March.

A Washington Ballet tour was also canceled earlier that year, prompting an Unfair Labor Practice charge against the company for bad-faith negotiating. Another successful charge against the Washington Ballet over two dancers being dismissed resulted in a complaint from the NLRB.

While the strike was painful, Jeffery Edwards believes it was a necessary step for the company to continue. Edwards is a dance professor at The Juilliard School who moved to New York at 14 to enter ballet school and danced for almost 20 years. At Washington, ballet dancers pushed for living wages and adequate rest times to avoid injury, but more issues remain. “I don’t think the conditions or the job security of dancers have improved from what I can see,” said Edwards, who at the time of the strike was the company’s Associate Artistic Director. “You look at some of the best and the most prestigious companies in the US, like American Ballet Theater, New York City Ballet. Even the top dancers are still collecting unemployment for many weeks of their contract year.”