Labor Unions in the Dance World (1): Stepping Towards Collective Organizing 

Léa Poiré

The opening ceremony of the 2024 Olympic Games on the banks of Paris’ iconic Seine river almost didn’t happen. A labor union representing the ceremony dancers threatened a strike, and backed down only two days before the big day. Despite this recent high-profile collective organizing, it remains rare to see dancers go on strike on such a scale, and unionizing is far from being a widespread practice in the dance world.

Motionless bodies, raised fists: four days before the start of the Olympic Games this summer, dancers who were scheduled to perform in the opening ceremony refused to take part in rehearsals. “The choreography started and then everything stopped, everything stood still,” recalls dancer Tristan Ihne. The reason for this was a strike notice, denouncing disparities in the way dancers were treated and demanding an increase in pay for audiovisual broadcasting rights.

Unlike other professions, it remains relatively rare for dancers to come together to demand better working conditions, and even more unusual for the media to take note. “The press has never been so interested in us,” rejoices Ihne. A staff representative at CCN-Ballet de Lorraine for some ten years before leaving the company this past summer, Ihne contributed to the lengthy negotiations with Paris 2024 and Paname 24 (executive producer of the opening ceremonies) as an elected member of the French performers’ union SFA-CGT. The last time France hosted the Olympics, in Albertville for the 1992 Winter Games, there was a strike led by 150 dancers. And in 2019, ballerinas from the Paris Opera danced Swan Lake in the city’s streets to defend their pension schemes. Despite these high-profile examples, labor organizing for dancers is still less common than for musicians or technical roles, professions in which collective mobilization has proven more systematic and well-oiled.

The fact is that the number of dancers who have joined a union remains lower than France’s national average. However, it is difficult to have a precise view of the matter, as there is no single union for the sector as a whole, and it is a sensitive topic. For example, it is forbidden to specify whether an employee is a member of a union or not, unless they have been elected to a position inside the union. At Synavi, a union of small performing arts venues and companies, only 9% of its 600 members employ dancers. And at the Syndeac, a union of larger arts institutions (including almost all of France’s national centers for choreography), there are 99 employers associated with dance representing 20% of all members, a proportion equivalent to that of dance in the performing arts sector as a whole. As for employee unions, there are some 350 dancers in the SFA-CGT (the French performer’s union), representing only 7% of the entire profession according to figures from the unemployment bureau  France Travail and the Ministry of Culture. This unionization rate is even lower than that of France’s general population, which was 10.3% in 2019 – one of the lowest in Europe.

Though getting a clear picture of unionization in dance from current statistics can be a challenge, it’s relatively easier to identify obstacles to collective representation. “Whether you’re a dancer, a choreographer, or even a company administrator, you’re very isolated. We see each other at rehearsals and performances, but after that everyone is often exhausted and moves on to other things. This lack of follow-up makes it very difficult to work as a group. It’s hard to build momentum,” explains Alexandre Goyer, who, like 95% of dancers and choreographers, doesn’t have a fixed employment contract with a single organization. 

This fragmentation of work is compounded by other factors that impact the possibility of long-term labor organizing: dancers’ careers are often short (13 years on average), and people working in dance tend to be quite young (29 years old on average for permanent staff, 32 years old for those who don’t have a fixed contract) – both of which complicate intergenerational transmission and solidarity. “Some people don’t even know that a union exists,” laments Antoine Roux-Briffaud, a member of the SFA-CGT. What’s more, the professional dance world is largely feminized, and women are traditionally less likely than men to unionize (according to 2019 statistics from the French Ministry of Labor, 9.5% of women in the country were part of a union, compared to 11% of men). 

“Making demands, opposition and conflict are far from being common practices in the dance world,” Antoine Roux-Briffaud, dancer, elected member of SFA-CGT union

“We’re already in a terrible mess trying to put together a project or a production. We can’t even think about really becoming invested in the field and defending our rights,” says Goyer who, as a choreographer and a performer, is both an employer and an employee. In a tense economy, with long hours and workers who have to be “on all fronts,” collective action and unionizing are not priorities for many. It’s a catch-22: a low rate of unionization impacts wages, which are lower than for other artistic professions, and it perpetuates job insecurity in a field that is already one of the most underfunded and overlooked of the cultural sector. 

“Making demands, opposition, and conflict are far from being common practices in the dance world,” analyzes Roux-Briffaud. Now 38, he, like many other dancers, joined a union later in life, 10 years into his career. “Choreographers take risks, and sometimes don’t even get paid. If they want to follow the rules, there will be consequences, like completely having to change the staging of a piece to treat the dancers properly. So they often see any conflict as a challenge to the artistic project rather than a question of workers’ rights. Even for those who are quite political, if you dare to ask that schedules be respected, it causes a big stir.” The fear of making companies even more vulnerable, combined with that of being “blacklisted,” is never far away. And people are quick to associate people making demands with the cliché of the “nasty, old-fashioned unionist,” adds the dancer calmly. 

The culture of silence is hard to break, but it has been upheld by decades of systematic silencing. “When I was a student, I never spoke out,” says Ihne. “You’re given corrections and you apply them without question. This way of learning has repercussions in our professional lives.” Nathalie Tissot agrees: “We’re very physical people, and we’re a bit shy about speaking out. I believe that everything changed when spoken word started to be integrated in choreography”. Tissot is a choreographer and the co-president of the Chorégraphes Associé·e·s union. Founded in 2006, “more than 60 years after” the creation of the stage directors’ union – as the minutes of their first meetings specify – it is the only union specifically for choreographers. “Coming together wasn’t natural,” recalls Tissot. “History tells us that many choreographers have been pitted against each other.”

Is dance afraid of collective representation? This was the title of an event organized by the CN D in April 2023, which aimed to open up debate on the subject. “People generally don’t want to join a union when everything’s going well...” says Julie Trouverie, an employee of Chorégraphes Associé·-e·-s, whose membership grew from 60 to 80 after the Covid crisis. Trouverie also notes that the recent pension reform in France led to a massive increase in the number of new members in the general labor unions CGT and CFDT.

For another professional dancer, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, the strike notice issued ahead of the Olympic Games also heralds a ripple effect. “To put it plainly, 300 dancers saw the impact of being in a union directly in their wallet.” Despite a low rate of unionization in the dance sector, actions can still be effective. But what makes a union effective? How can dancers make themselves heard collectively? We’ll be addressing these questions in a forthcoming follow-up article devoted to the mechanisms and modes of action of unions, which are both industry watchdogs and, says Roux-Briffaud with a bit of a laugh, “a form of “life insurance.”

Léa Poiré is an independent journalist based in Paris and Lyon. After studying choreography and being in charge of the dance section and co-editor in chief for Mouvement magazine, she is now working in cultural journalism and media education. She collaborates regularly with choreographer Mette Edvardsen as a researcher and teaches critical writing and editing at the University of Saint-Etienne. She is also the editor of CN D magazine.

Chorégraphes Associé·e·s union
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SFA-CGT union
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Syndeac union
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Synavi union
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