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No one disputes the fact that the world of professional dance can
be brutal but budget cuts to the arts have forced companies to become
even more competitive. It is therefore vital for dancers to have
alternatives. Many now realize that a college education, something
once sneered at, may give them a long-term edge. Susan Mann, a tenured
associate professor at Towson University in Maryland says, “The
college experience provides a foundation for a much longer and,
hopefully, more artistically satisfying career than just two years
of being ‘used’ in a corps position… College is
a good place to learn the fundamentals behind the steps. There is
time to devote to how muscles should work, how to recover well from
an injury…Some have the emotional maturity to handle the more
demanding professional environment and some of them have the technical
polish to dance the roles, but few of them have both, along with
the charisma they will need for performing careers.”
“When a dancer is ‘used’ because they fit a costume
for a corps part, they don’t always have a chance to grow
as charismatic solo performers. Their heads need to tilt exactly
so far and no further, their legs to lift exactly so high, their
movements to travel forward exactly the same distance as the person
in front of them. If they don’t last longer than two years,
they may not have a chance to develop the nuance and expressive
voice required for featured roles.”
Ms. Mann speaks with the voice of experience. No slouch in either
the teaching or dance arena, her credits include studying with such
luminaries as Igor Youskevitch, Stanley Hall, Mary Alice Callahan,
Yacov Sharir, Sylvia Druker and Denise Bell-Hyland. She performed
with the Hartford Chamber Ballet, Das Bonner Ballett and the Sharir
Dance Company before receiving her M.F.A. in Choreography. She is
the recipient of the Individual Artist Award for Solo Dance Performance
and the Individual Artist Award for Choreography in the State of
Maryland.
A college education is also an opportunity to “give young
dancers the tools they need to sort out abuse from dancing, to learn
how to take care of and take responsibility for themselves and to
provide a transition from their family environment to the professional
one they hope to enter…During my first season with Das Bonner
Ballett, I injured my left ankle during a rehearsal. The director
told me I needed to perform that evening or he would replace me.
The question for me – perform and possibly permanently damage
my ankle or refuse to perform and lose my solo status – was
much easier for me to handle because I had already spent time in
college learning to handle similar problems…So when the question
came up for me about my ankle, I had already thought through my
priorities and decided that keeping my future in dance was more
important than sacrificing it for the present.”
Explaining the conundrum of funding’s effect on dancers’
careers, Ms. Mann says that after the initial budget cuts of the
early 1980’s “…thirty of the top dance companies
in the U.S. folded then and many have not recovered…so my
students are looking forward to very different careers than the
one I enjoyed. I performed with a resident orchestra in Germany,
Hartford and Austin. The ballets were fully staged, meaning that
my costumes were built around me, and appropriate sets and lighting
were provided. For many of my students, the experience they have
performing with our university dance company will be one of the
highlights of their dancing career…When they leave us, they
are likely to find that if they do perform, it will be to an audio
tape, wearing a costume that has been altered many times, and after
a day of working at a ‘real job.’ Knowing this, I work
hard to make sure they get the most artistic, fulfilling experience
I can provide while they are here.”
And there is the challenge. “We are balancing time, space
and money issues to try to compromise where we can and make the
best of the situation. We have a Children’s Dance Division
working evenings and weekends, which supplies much of our operating
budget. We lose class and rehearsal space by keeping them here,
but gain the funding we need to technically support our concerts
and bring in the guest artists we love.”
Despite budget cuts, colleges and universities are managing to
survive and to turn out polished dancers who think for themselves
and know what is best for their futures. They have learned how to
assess the extent of an injury, how to stand up and say “no”
when necessary and, most important, how to develop pursuits that
will serve them well when it’s time to quit. These are the
things that may provide an edge in the dance world.•
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