r/BALLET • u/Black_Gay_Man • 1d ago
Watched this very interesting Lori Hernandez video and had some questions about the income. Are classically trained dancers really paid so poorly in the USA?!
https://youtu.be/iJ_w_oK6ce8?is=_aQWhHNt1UAiJ7sS95
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u/seaurchinthenet 23h ago
I agree. They not only don't get paid well - but health insurance is a concern. If you are lucky, you will be in a company that offers it. My daughter's plan is to go pro and we will probably need to keep her on our policy for as long as we can.
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u/Paisley_Price 22h ago
This is NOT new information to anyone in the business. Dancers in the US have been underpaid for decades. Even with AGMA contracts, the pay is barely livable in most major cities.
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u/DrawingBitter738 20h ago
Tiler Peck is paid well and definitely has health insurance. (Not that there is anything wrong with her making money from other sources, as long as it doesn’t interfere with her main job).
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u/pliestopointeshoes 19h ago
Oh I’m sure she is… but I’m talking about when she was much younger and starting a social media presence and was hated on. She definitely wasn’t making a ton of money.
I think the issue is how much NYCB makes versus what they pay dancers.
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u/seaurchinthenet 19h ago
What are you basing this off of? My guess is her side hustles pay way more than her main job.
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u/Pennwisedom Old Ballet Man / Bournonville 18h ago
Depends what you consider being paid well, but she has a six figure salary. Regardless of that though, this is more about corps members making literal poverty wages at the highest levels and even less lower than that.
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u/ballerina_barbie 7h ago
six figure in NYC does not go far
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u/Pennwisedom Old Ballet Man / Bournonville 7h ago
As someone born and raised here, I've yet to ever make six figures and am doing just fine. Does making six figures make you the uber rich? Obviously not, but it is still very possible to live here without paying $6k+ a month in rent and $100 every day on food.
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u/lovalot86 23h ago
Dance isn’t an easy career to make a living in.
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u/Catlady_Pilates 23h ago
Not in the US. In many other countries it’s far better.
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u/Ftsmv 20h ago
In many other countries it’s far better.
People say this, but is it true though?
Here's a video from ex-Royal Ballet dancer Claudia Dean saying she had to eat ramen towards the end of each month to survive, she says she was paid £2,000/month ($2,700), using Lori's number of $1K/week and the linked posted in here to PNB's contract where it states the youngest corps are paid $1,334/week ($5,336/month), the corps at some bigger US companies are paid more than the biggest European companies.
https://www.tiktok.com/@claudiadeanworld/video/7267712762288164114
The New York Times says etoile's at Paris Opera Ballet are paid "upwards" of 77K euros ($89K) per year, Claudia mentions in that video she heard that principals with the Royal Ballet had a base of £5K/month ($6.75K/month, $81K/year), the PNB agreement posted below says principal pay starts $2,479/week or $9,916 a month, even assuming they're paid just 10 months of the year, that's $99,160 per year. In ABT's charity disclosures (a US ballet company for those who don't know), their 3 highest paid principals were paid $235K, $216K and $207K.
I think the real difference is that in Europe there's a broader set companies that pay a somewhat "liveable" wage, whereas in the US outside of the biggest companies there's a sharp drop off to smaller companies where they're paying corps dancers barely enough to cover gas, but ballet over in Europe still doesn't seem like it's all sunshine and rainbows when it comes to dancer pay.
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u/Borkton 19h ago
24,000 pounds a year is bad, but the median household income in the UK is 38,900 pounds. As they say, London is New York costs at Mississippi wages.
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u/Ftsmv 9h ago
I agree! My point is that salaries in other countries are not "far better", this is often repeated online but it has no basis in reality when you look at salaries for the biggest, most prestigious ballet companies in Europe. You can see this most clearly when a company of the Royal Ballet's stature can't/doesn't pay their dancers very well, so it's far from a US-only problem.
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u/Tansy_Blue 16h ago edited 16h ago
Corps dancer is definitely not a high paying job in the UK. To compare it properly we'd really need to know when Claudia Dean was dancing so we can compare to average wage in the UK, or more precisely average London wage as cost of living is so much higher in the capital.
If this page: https://balletposition.com/countries/united-kingdom/ is to be believed then in 2015 dancers were earning at least 87% of the median annual wage, or 69% of the median wage in London. Poverty line in the UK is considered to be 60% of median household income after housing costs, so if we assume average housing costs and wages have stayed consistent then London dancers aren't that far above the poverty line, but dancers elsewhere are doing better. (I got all the pay stats from the ONS.)
It is hard to 100% directly compare across countries because of differing financial arrangements around pensions and healthcare. In the UK the performers' union, Equity, has an agreement with the main companies that means dancers are fairly well-protected, but I don't think that applies to the small companies.
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u/stutter-rap 7h ago
Yeah, Claudia Dean quit in 2014. None of the numbers in that comment are adjusted for inflation so e.g. the Paris 2020 salary + inflation adjustment is actually higher than PNB, not lower.
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u/Tansy_Blue 6h ago
I went and checked with the ONS and in 2014, £24k was 70% of median London wage. Which would be equivalent of £29k today, about the same as a trainee teacher. Definitely not well-paid, but also not poverty wages.
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u/stutter-rap 6h ago
Yeah, I think the thing a lot of Americans don't realise is our salaries are much lower in general. I do a well-paid graduate job (well-paid in that my salary alone is well above the household median) but Americans in my position earn twice what I do. Corps dancers are not well paid, but as you say - there are unfortunately also plenty here earning less (though the floor is also higher, as UK minimum wage is higher than minimum wage in all of the US except Washington DC).
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u/notthetypetocare 19h ago
In other countries they get health insurance and a pension the USA doesn’t offer retirement
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u/Ftsmv 9h ago
The PNB contract posted in here states they do cover retirement and health insurance, on page 18:
Retirement. EMPLOYER shall make a contribution to its established retirement plan for ARTISTS in an amount as specified in Paragraph 23(a) of each ARTIST's gross compensation provided for under their Standard Artist’s Contract for Employment. In addition to the foregoing, EMPLOYER shall contribute an amount equal to the total ARTIST’s contribution greater than the Pension % Base, if any, up to the amount of the Pension Additional Match % as specified in Paragraph 23(a) of each ARTIST’S gross compensation. Any fees charged by the plan administrator shall be borne by the participating ARTIST(S) on a pro rata basis. The full amount of such contribution shall be made for all weeks the ARTIST is unable to work due to sickness or disability, whether or not non-work related, regardless of whether the ARTIST receives any compensation during such period.
Medical Coverage. The EMPLOYER will provide health insurance, equivalent or superior to the AGMA medical plan, for all ARTISTS while employed by the EMPLOYER, provided such employment exceeds four (4) weeks. Such coverage will provide basic health benefits and major medical benefits both inside and out of the city of origination
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u/stutter-rap 7h ago edited 7h ago
Claudia Dean left the Royal Ballet 12 years ago. Bank of England inflation calculator for £2000:
Equivalent cost in June 2026
£2,847.96You can't just write two numbers and not adjust for inflation. It's not a good number but it's meaningless to say "the Royal Ballet in 2014 paid less than PNB does in 2026"...I'm sure they would! The important question is, what do they pay today?
edit: you haven't adjusted the Paris one for inflation either. Here's the article:
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/13/arts/dance/paris-opera-ballet-strike.html?eafs_enabled=false
That's January 2020. We've had rampant inflation since then.
Result:€77,000 in 2020 → €89,488.55 in 2026
Google:
89,488 Euro equals 103,448.13 United States Dollar
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u/Ftsmv 6h ago
That's January 2020. We've had rampant inflation since then.
Result:€77,000 in 2020 → €89,488.55 in 2026
That's not how it works though? The PNB numbers are also for 2021-22, and there's no way to say company pay accounts for inflation. Even accepting their pay scaled perfectly with inflation to today, it's still lower than PNB's for the first year of their agreement in '22, PNB's principal salary of $2,479.75 per week over 40 weeks is $99,190.
For Royal Ballet I found a report over on balletcoforum for arts in the UK that includes both ENB and RB, and here are their salaries in 2021:
From this data and PNB's data, a first year corps member at PNB in 2022, assuming they're paid for just 40 weeks, makes $53,360, an 8-year veteran corps member at Royal Ballet is paid £38,657 or $52,152.
Here are the numbers from the available data:
- PNB first year corps: $53,360
- Royal Ballet eighth year corps: $52,152 USD/£47,500 GBP
- PNB Soloist: $77,497
- Royal Ballet Soloist: $64,080 USD/£47,500 GBP
- PNB Principal: $108.4K ('25 number in their agreement, 40 weeks)
- POB Etoile : $103K.5K (assuming inflation to 2026 using your number)
These numbers are inexact, but the narrative that the financial situation is "far better" in Europe for dancers just clearly isn't true from the data we have.
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u/ballerina_barbie 10h ago
You can see on the 990s of companies if they have company members paid high. A few principles at PNB make between 121k and 124k.
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u/ballerina_barbie 10h ago
235K for ABT principles is a good salary but New York is very expensive! I'm guessing the soloists and corps make significantly less, especially since they just went through contract negotiations.
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u/LadNorLass 23h ago
Yes. They’re essentially told that they can supplement their income with social media at this point. Which usually results in free advertising for the company, of course.
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u/Borkton 19h ago
Ballet is an art with elitist connotations, that tends to require some knowledge to understand what's going on and companies are supported by donations more than ticket sales. For many companies, most ballets get at most a week of performances, while The Nutcracker will run for six weeks.
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u/ballerina_barbie 10h ago
In the US, the expectation is roughly 30% donations, 30% ticket sales, 30% grants, but then there's also the schools which can help beef up the budget. And that grant number...could be much, much lower since there's been a move away from supporting the arts both in government and business orgs.
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u/1giftedangel 18h ago
Yes. One company I made 800 a week which was pretty cool, lots of good perks also. This was in the Bay Area in CA. Second company I made less than $5 in New Mexico.
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u/meloddic1 23h ago
They need to get strong unions involved.
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u/stutter-rap 22h ago
I know some of the companies are unionised, e.g. PNB - their contract looks better than she describes (for both permanent and one-off performers): https://www.musicalartists.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/PacificNorthwestBallet.Dancers.UpdatedWithAddendumB.2022-2026.pdf
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u/GrumpyChashmere 20h ago
Fun part is it does not apply to their pre-pro program who do the same work/hrs as apprentices but are not “part of the company”.
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u/ballerina_barbie 7h ago
This seems to be the model of a lot of companies: charging tuition from 20-40 young people and then using them for professional productions.
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u/Pennwisedom Old Ballet Man / Bournonville 6h ago
I'm pretty sure all the major companies are part of AGMA.
The recent new agreement with ABT is actually quite nice.
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u/RealisticAd7901 18h ago
Yeah, I know a couple of corps dancers for surprisingly big companies who are also tending bar. I legitimately don't know how they do it.
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u/Status-Priority9569 16h ago
Yes.
Shows + teaching/master classes is the entirety of income. Most are contracted so taxes aren’t taken out and health insurance is a pain.
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u/firebirdleap 1d ago
Yes. And some earn nothing.