Just read your 'Creation' article and wanted to comment but I think they are closed... You make an extremely important point in relation to the frankly scary 'off the record' comment about being able to pay dancers more if you employ less of them.
I've heard the question, "are we training too many dancers?" but never, "are we employing too many?"!!!! The statement may be technically true but contains seriously flawed 'logic' for all reasons you put forward. I particularly wanted to support the very good point made about employing more dancers than 'needed'. Research has shown that the most common cause of dance injury is fatigue and overwork.
There of course could be various contributory factors to this, however a major one is inevitably work load, not to metion insufficient preparation (rehearsal) time. When all dancers are performing all the time (having had barely any time to get 'fit for performance' if having to do other work between dance jobs and only given 2 or 3 weeks rehearsal time) and no slack is built in to compensate when injury inevitably does occur, the result can be even more injuries as other dancers' workloads are increased to compensate.... and the cycle continues.
If companies employed even fewer dancers you'd run the risk of more cancelled performances which is clearly not what they are being funded for.
Bottom line is, fund companies sufficiently so that they can employ the number of dancers they need, pay them a fair wage and provide the support they need to stay fit and available for performance and you have a more sustainable art form through which the creative juices can freely flow.
Helen Laws
