Pain, precarity and passionate attachment: UK freelance dancers in crisis

The UK performing arts sector is in crisis following austerity, Brexit, Covid-19, and the rising cost of living. This is especially true for the sector's largely freelance workforce. The situation in the dance sector, particularly contemporary dance, is especially critical.

Reliant on precarious, diminishing public funding, contemporary dancers normally work on short term, project-based contracts, with high job insecurity and low pay. Contemporary dancers are also exposed to high levels of injury. Without sick pay and with their bodies as their working tools, dancers often work through pain and injury. This combination means that contemporary dance is arguably a form of ‘hyper-precarious’ work, with dancers both socio-economically and physically vulnerable.

The research asks two vital questions: How are dancers’ experiences of pain and injury shaped by chronic precarity, and crisis? What can be done to address this, now and in future? It will draw from Judith Butler’s theory of ‘passionate attachment’ to explore how passion can legitimise and thus perpetuate precarity, particularly via the rhetoric of resilience, and the ways in which it shapes dancers’ experiences.

Findings aim to make a contribution to research on crisis and precarity in creative work in organisation studies, and to offer evidence-based action-orientated policy recommendations for change to be shared across the UK’s performing arts industry.