The Shifting Landscape for
Independent Dance Companies in France

Isabelle Calabre

In 2024, the CN D surveyed more than 100 independent dance companies in France, publishing a report that highlights major challenges faced by today’s choreographers and the professionals they work with. The results raise a number of legitimate concerns, including the long-term economic viability of the sector within a country long known world-wide for its public support for the arts.

Last October, France’s National center for dance (CN D) revealed the results of its 2024 survey among independent dance companies in the country during a well-attended event for arts professionals. Of the 520 officially registered dance companies in France, 120 filled out the online questionnaire, which broadly aimed to understand evolving practices in the sector. The survey’s questions were designed to gain a better understanding of independent companies’ main activities and operations; taking stock of the dance world’s overall structure and most-pressing needs; observing major evolutions over the past two decades; and contributing food-for-thought about how best to face current and future challenges. The results,” asserts Alice Rodelet, the Director of the CN D’s Transmission et Métiers department, which includes a resource center for dance professionals, “are in line with our day-to-day conversations with the companies.”

The poll’s results also offer a fascinating snapshot of the business models of these companies, 99% of which focus on contemporary dance, and of their operating conditions. Exactly how to structure an independent dance company was one of the most salient points discussed in the resulting report – and the most decisive in terms of financial health and sustainability.

Given the vast scope of a dance company’s missions and tasks nowadays, it appears that most independent choreographers, although often forced to do so due to financial constraints, do not wish to work alone. “Even if they are the primary decision-makers within a company, their need to call on artistic, technical, administrative, or communication staff is clearly formulated,” says Rodelet. “It is above all budgetary constraints that slow down these collaborations and their long-term viability.” The most common structural model remains one in which a small permanent team is complemented by various freelancers, as needed. The exact shape of an independent dance company tends to evolve over time and according to the availability of funding, which in turn depends on one key area: administrative management.

The thirty-year-old company Les Gens du Quai is a case in point. “Initially, it was a simple association founded with a group of dancers from the Montpellier Conservatory,” explains co-director Anne Lopez. “Soon enough, my brother, composer François Lopez, joined the collective, and we performed in situ, combining dance with music.” Their well-received first piece, Meeting, in 1998, won them the support of the city’s National Choreographic Center (CCN), then directed by Mathilde Monnier, as well as the Montpellier Danse festival and then the Théâtre de Nîmes. “We quickly climbed to the top,” says Lopez. “But then, if you want to last in this industry, you have to dig deep.” 

To this end, the choreographer hired an administrator in 2011 on a non-permanent contract, whose responsibilities included finding funding to transform her own position into a permanent one. Things seemed to be going well – as the company was able to secure project-based funding and, later, longer-term structural funding – until they discovered a major financial scam perpetrated by... the newly hired administrator herself! “I found myself all alone in charge of all this,” says Lopez. “I kept it up for four years, with the feeling of being constantly overwhelmed and, in the end, I never felt I really knew what I was doing”.

After this fiasco, Lopez decided to “close up shop” and, from 2017 onwards, took up the challenge of existing without traditional public subsidies, first working on a community project in her local Ardèche region. In 2021, she created a new structure, now managed by an external administrator and made up of a core of three staff members on non-permanent contracts. 85% of the company’s revenue comes from the sale of tickets and shows, as well as tours and training activities, especially in museums, while the remaining 15% comes from public subsidies. Lopez’s next objective is to provide core team members with permanent employment contracts (a sort of Holy Grail achieved by only 20% of the companies surveyed), by seeking funding from the private sector and the French Ministry of Education.

While for 86% of the companies surveyed artistic creation remains at the heart of their mission, community-based initiatives play an increasingly important role. 72% of companies are involved in artistic and cultural education programs (EAC) and 43% in teaching related to dance. “Whether intentional or unintentional, this diversification is clearly evident and has repercussions on the teams, as each member is called upon to carry out a multiplicity of activities that are not always part of the job they were initially hired to do,” notes Rodelet.

Choreographer Nina Vallon considers it “normal” to incorporate dance-related activities outside of creating and touring in her professional life. Having worked with the Forsythe Company before setting up her own companies (first Envy&P, then As Soon As Possible), the fortysomething artist from Geneva has learned to enjoy audience outreach, particularly in schools, and considers it an extension of her artistic practice. “I just love it!,” she says, explaining that she’s “set up a teaching team under the responsibility of a dancer and assistant choreographer” Arielle Chauvel-Lévy. They work together at the start of each season to draw up a schedule of outreach and education activities, which they offer to various organizations. “Among our 15 instructors, 6 of whom are regulars, we choose the one best suited to the target audience,” says Vallon. “For example, a dancer able to express herself in sign language for deaf people.”

However, despite “this dynamic of creation and encounters,” which offers additional sources of income, Rodelet acknowledges that the financial situation of many independent dance companies is cause for concern. “More than half of them declared an overall budget of less than €51,000 for the last financial year, and they are heavily dependent on public funding. The impending cuts that have been announced by a number of local authorities and in certain areas of government action are therefore extremely worrying for the future,” she says.

Choreographer Myriam Gourfink’s dance company LOLDANSE, which she founded in w1999, is among the 25% of independent companies surveyed who have been around for more than twenty years. Despite its relative longevity, LOLDANSE’s business model remains fragile. Following France’s 2022 government reform of state funding allocation procedures, LOLDANSE’s three-year public subsidy was reduced to two years. As a consequence, the company reduced its creative output from one new piece a year, to one every two or three years. Matthieu Bajolet, LOLDANSE’s administrator, is not employed full-time by the association, which operates on a model that relies on solidarity and community involvement – a “creative but precarious” status, he says, which in the long term requires the company to consider “other ways of doing things.” It’s as much praise as it sounds like a warning, just like the general conclusions of this survey.

Isabelle Calabre is a journalist specializing in culture and dance, who works with several magazines: Danza&Danza, CN D Magazine and Le Parisien Week-end. She is the author of the book Hip hop et Cies, 1993-2012 as well as the YA book Je danse à l’Opéra (ed. Parigramme). Additionally, she has conducted research on West Indian and Guyanese quadrilles that has led to an essay submitted to the CN D in 2023, as well as an inventory of theses Creole social dances for their inclusion in France’s Universal Cultural Heritage list. In 2024, with Caraïbéditions, she launched a new collection showcasing the diversity of dances and the children who practice them. Already published: Moi aussi je danse le quadrille, Moi aussi je danse le hip-hop.

Report of the survey conducted by the CN D
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The dance company: mutations and futures
Professional meeting at CN D Pantin / Past event
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