Changing Careers in an Unsustainable System

Aïnhoa Jean-Calmettes

As public funding for culture declines, how are dancers and choreographers faring? For many, the financial crisis has also become a career crisis, forcing them to abandon their artistic practices earlier than anticipated.

In 2020, the Covid-19 crisis led choreographer Robin Lamothe to pursue a Master’s degree in Projects and Cultural Institutions Management. “I just couldn’t imagine continuing to work with the weight of so much uncertainty,” Lamothe says of the decision. It was one he made despite the success of his first choreographic work, for which he had received a grant, connected with co-producers, won an international prize, and secured tour dates. 

After graduating, Lamothe tried to get back into dance and choreography. “It didn’t work out,” he says. “My CV wasn’t any good anymore. In this world, everything moves so fast. If you’re not in workshops or auditioning, they just move on without you.” Furthermore, “the economic model that would have supported the choreographic career I wanted to have simply didn’t exist. My artistic vision was based on long-term field research, and it couldn’t have been developed within a system where I was expected to participate in the current overproduction by producing new pieces every year or every other year.”

Lamothe made his peace with it. “After years of struggling, I needed to find some form of stability,” he says. After gaining experience in production, distribution, and cultural diplomacy, he is now the director of Cultural Affairs at the Chirongui Cultural Center in Mayotte.

In the dance world, the pressure to change careers is nothing new: it is part and parcel of a performer’s life, their time on stage generally coming to an end earlier than those in other artistic fields. The CN D recognized this reality long ago, and addresses the issue through its Professional Resources Department. Yet “in the context of the current [cultural] crisis, this reality is even harsher,” says department head Lucie Mollier. “It is something that people in the dance world experience along with other forms of economical and psychological violence. There’s a lot of anxiety about this.”

Today, the question of stopping work as an artist is no longer something people consider only after an injury or upon retirement—it is an ever-present possibility. According to a June 2026 study by the Performing Arts Administrators Association (Association des professionels de l’administration du spectacle), 21% of artistic directors of dance companies say they are considering abandoning their current activities in the next three years. People in and outside the dance world describe this alarming situation as a “silent” or “sneaky” “restructuring and layoff plan.”

“I don’t think there are many people who consciously give up their careers,” says Jérémy Mazeron, head of international development at La Briqueterie, a National Center for Choreographic Development (Centre de développement chorégraphique national) in the Val-de-Marne region. “I’ve seen a lot of careers that just die off slowly. Choreographers struggle to maintain their activities, even if they’re only doing one show a year. They do things differently, present their work through alternative channels, and try to find some financial balance, to the point where some even take on alternative careers outside the dance world.”

Mollier and Mazeron both stress that the act of leaving the professional dance world, most often unwillingly, is “experienced as a failure that people have a hard time talking about.” In dance, work is deeply intertwined with identity, and ending one’s career before retirement age remains a taboo.

For Agata Maszkiewicz, it was a lack of artistic freedom that ultimately led her to leave choreography behind. Originally trained as a dancer the Institute of Dance Arts at the Anton Bruckner Privatuniversitaet in Linz in 2006, Austria Maszkiewicz graduated from the Exerce MA programme in Montpellier. Although her choreography toured internationally, she struggled to find her place in the Francophone dance scene. At 45, after completing dozens of projects, she felt that “everything had become a series of compromises," she says. "I should have done more ‘dancy’ pieces, developed more projects for children, known the right people, done cultural mediation projects... I just no longer had the energy to be ‘strategic’ about my career.”

A loss of identity is not the only reason why changing careers can be so challenging for dance artists. “People don’t earn a lot of money in dance, which means they don’t have a lot of savings,” says Mollier. “Because of factors such as touring, their lives are not as structured around family or stable romantic relationships as those who work in other fields. This means they often don’t have the financial security that partnered people can have. [Transitional] moments are hard because they often go through them alone.” 

Mollier invites people to rethink the vocabulary they use when it comes to changing careers. “The term ‘change’ is scary,” she says. “‘Transitioning’ is less intimidating, and it’s also a more accurate way to describe these moments in life.” Is “transitioning” an accurate way to describe the careers of Lamothe and Maszkiewicz, both of whom are trying to keep one foot in the dance world? As the newly appointed director of an institution, Lamothe hopes to have more influence over the modes of production he endured as an artist. Maszkiewicz, meanwhile, is training to become a physiotherapist and believes that many of the skills she developed as a choreographer will be transferable to her new career. Although she is not yet sure how, she wants to remain connected to her creativity.

Still, Maszkiewicz worries that “working full time and pursuing artistic projects in my spare time”—in other words, “working to make a living because I can’t live off my artistic activity”—amounts to “conforming to the liberal ideals that are being imposed on us,” she says. “It is terrible that it has to come to this.”

Aïnhoa Jean-Calmettes is a journalist specializing in cultural and opinion pieces. She writes for Libération and coordinates the humanities sections of Mouvement magazine. She hosts events at the Arab World Institute, the La Manufacture d’idées festival, and the Maison de la poésie, and regularly collaborates with Villa Gillet, Lyon’s center for contemporary literature.

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