How Dance Can Influence Your Career - Part 1

If you’re taking your little one to her first dance class, you’re probably not thinking about the experience as a building block to a future career for her. It’s more about watching her learn how to follow directions, interact with the other girls, and give you all kinds of adorable memories.

But for girls who stick with dance, it really can be a fantastic pathway for your future career. And we’re not just talking about the small percentage of girls who go on to become professional dancers as adults either. Even they eventually have to move on from dance to another career when their bodies just won’t cooperate anymore, and dance provides them with a fantastic foundation to do just that.

How? Let’s look at some real life examples. All of the women below were able to use skills they first learned in dance to find success in another artistic position.

Broadway Stage Manager. Lisa Dawn Cave worked as a Broadway dancer for years, but when she decided to attempt the transition to stage manager, she discovered that it was surprisingly easy. Why? Because her time dancing made her a natural at responding to and understanding musical cues, picking up movement, and creating show books that were incredibly detailed (and therefore helpful) because she was able to clearly articulate what dancers needed to do from scene-to-scene.

Dance Company Founder. Margot Greenlee didn’t want to give up dancing, so she turned herself and her art into a company that brings dance to unexpected settings – hospitals, company retreats, and so on. Bodywise Dance allows her to use the technique, composition, and improvisation skills she picked up from years of dance.

Visual Artist. Nicole Battelle Van Hook saw dance as making art with her feet, but years of battling MS left her unable to continue expressing herself with her body. Instead, she took her knowledge and love gained from years of dance and recreated it by making artistic sculptures showing off dance choreography.

Studio Founder and Director. After moving to Utah, Brittany Reese discovered a wealth of experienced dancers who had no outlet or infrastructure to help them display their art. Being a dancer for many years herself had taught Reese how to facilitate programming and “build the bricks and mortar,” but perhaps most importantly, it cultivated a desire in her to share dance with the world. She used this knowledge and passion to forge and help connect the dance community in her area.

As you can see, dance is a fantastic foundation and entry point for forging a wide variety of careers in the arts. But that doesn’t mean that learning dance only prepares girls for those types of careers.

In part two of our exploration of how dance can influence your little one’s career, we’ll look at three women who used tools and knowledge gained in dance to gain positions completely outside of the world of performance arts.

Bio

Gallery of Dance is a family-run dance studio in Freehold, NJ, and offers a wide range of recreational and competitive dance classes, including ballet, tap, jazz, and hip hop, for students from preschool to high school. Learn more at GalleryofDance.com

Our Mission: To Provide Solid Dance Training and Foster Our Future Leaders