#9 june 25
For Young Dancers, the Trickiest Moves Often Come After Graduation
Claudine Colozzi
The transition from student to professional has always been treacherous in the arts, but dance schools across France are fighting to change that reality. As higher education institutions offering the National Professional Diploma in Dance grapple with employment challenges facing their graduates, they're pioneering new approaches to launch careers. CN D Magazine examines how these efforts are reshaping the dance world's approach to nurturing emerging talent.
Camping - the CN D’s annual flagship event which gathers 300 students from art schools around the world for two weeks in June is a place of creative experimentation where young artists grow and connect. Since its launch in 2015, Camping has established itself as a must for many young dance professionals-in-training. In addition to artistic workshops, professional development resources and networking opportunities are available. “Camping represents an important moment for our students at the end of their curriculum,” says Gabriel Schenker, head of the BA program in contemporary dance at La Manufacture – Haute école des arts de la scène in Lausanne. “Some have gotten job offers from the professionals they meet during Camping.”
The issue of young dancers’ budding careers lies at the very heart of advanced training. “This issue comes up informally as early as during the entrance exam,” says Schenker. “Candidates repeatedly ask if graduates actually find work when they leave the school.” In France, the six higher education training programs that award a Professional Dance Diploma have integrated the issue of how to enter the job market into their curricula. “It’s not just a question of teaching technical and artistic skills,” explains Alice Rodelet, director of the Learning and Careers department at the CN D. “We try to put our students into realistic work situations as much as we can.”
Career preparation often begins right from the professional training stage. Schools are often ideal places for young people to meet working choreographers, who can also be their instructors, likely to involve them in future projects. Conservatories can also offer optimal conditions for building a network, which is a fundamental element in this line of work. The School for Contemporary Dance in Angers, affiliated with the city’s national choreographic center, is uniquely connected to professional realities. “Students are immersed in a space that is also a place where pieces are being programmed, where shows are being produced, and events geared towards audiences are being devised,” explains Amélie Coster, Head of curriculum. “It’s a great thing for our students because they can meet our artists-in-residence as they are rehearsing and performing on stage”.
“There’s a huge gap between a highly supervised collective practice and the big leap into professional life” Eléna Lecoq
Many schools offer courses to make students aware of the challenges they’ll face over the course of their career in the arts. “From the middle of their curriculum, we offer a module called School-to-work Transfer,” explains Schenker. “We invite former students to give concrete examples and share their career paths, so that our students can understand the many possibilities and paths that are open to them.” Indeed, the years of training enable students to discover their artistic identity and experiment in different ways with their future profession. “We give them the tools to start thinking about what they want to develop when they leave school,” explains Marion Colléter, Associate Director of the Cndc in Angers. “You build it up as you go along.”
Negotiating the transition between higher education establishments and the professional world seems essential. Indeed, many young graduates are faced with a kind of void when they leave the structure of school. “There’s a huge gap between a highly supervised collective practice and the big leap into professional life,” says 24-year-old Eléna Lecoq, a 2023 graduate of the National Conservatory for Dance and Music in Lyon. “At first, I found myself forced to accept a random job as I was trying to keep up my dance practice,” says Lecoq, who is now touring in Michel Schweizer’s Dogs. “I felt that I’d been trained primarily to respond to the demands of a choreographer, but not to what was actually awaiting me when I turned pro.”
“The very idea of ‘entering’ the job market implies adapting to what already exists, and young people are pushing us to question ourselves in an ever-changing professional field” Marion Colléter
While modules are given on legal issues in the workplace and career management, young dancers remain a little lost when reality clashes with what they have discovered during their studies. “It can all seem abstract until they are confronted with certain situations, such as reading an employment contract or producing their own show,” notes Rodelet. “That’s why schools alone cannot be in charge of preparing them for the professional world. The CN D’s Professional Resources department continues to support these young people in all matters relating to their careers.”
In an extremely difficult context for young artists – who are often juggling several jobs, looking for venues to work on future pieces, and opportunities to show their work – the question of how schools can evolve to provide better support to their graduates is crucial. “The very idea of ‘entering’ the job market implies adapting to what already exists, and young people are pushing us to question ourselves in an ever-changing professional field,” says Colléter. “Two years ago, we launched a specific program at the School for Contemporary Dance in Angers to support young graduates on an individual basis.” The current generation is much more flexible, more “agile in moving from one project to another,” she says, with “a greater awareness of what will enable them to exist as artists.”
Gone are the days when dancers were first performers before becoming choreographers. Today, they experiment with all kinds of projects as soon as they leave school. What’s more, many young artists are forming collectives to launch their creative careers. After a career in Brazil, Lucas Resende, 33, enrolled at the School for Contemporary Dance in Angers. It was a way of starting a new chapter and building a professional career more firmly rooted in Europe.
At the end of his time there in 2024, in addition to having worked as a dancer in various pieces, notably for Mathilde Monnier, he set up his own company, Blue Lava, with fellow graduate Alina Tskhovrebova. “The training is very intense. And when you leave this privileged environment, you’re confronted with the desire to develop your own projects and the obligation to accept random jobs to pay the rent.” Navigating between their personal aspirations and the reality of the professional world, many manage to carve out their own path with steadfastness and patience.
In the mid-1990s, while she was still a student majoring in journalism in Lille, Claudine Colozzi interned at the dance magazine Les Saisons de la danse, where she learned to sharpen her critical perspective. As a journalist, she works for magazines, teaches, and writes on a variety of topics, notably disability. She continues to feed her insatiable curiosity fo r dance by writing for websites such as Danses avec la plume and L’œil d’Olivier. She has written documentary books for young audiences : L’Encyclo de la danse (Gründ), Dans les coulisses de l’Opéra, La danse classique and Passion hip-Hop (Nathan).
Camping festival
From June 16th to 27th at the SUBS, the Maison de la Danse in Lyon, the CNSMD of Lyon, the CN D in Lyon, the Théâtre Le Ciel and the Studio Chatha
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