Literature review #2

Literature review #2

Career Transitions in Professional Dancers: Stanley E. Greben, M.D., F.R.C.P.C

An article where the author summarises his experience with 160 dancer-clients who are experiencing career transitions. It includes some psychological aspects of dance careers and of career transitions are considered.

This article includes

Introduction

Psychological Aspects of the Dance Career

Psychological Aspects of Career Transition

The Role of Psychotherapy in Dancer Transition

Clinical illustrations

Conclusion

The majority of head dancers in Parkdean have been trained in dance and so experience some of the challenges that Greben discusses. The change from being a performer/parkdean trouper, to then leading your team to performance success comes with challenges and accomplishments, however each individual with require different support when making that change.

The section on ‘Psychological aspects of dance career’, talks about how dancers in general become ‘accustomed to being instructed, directed, and corrected’. As a head dancer you have to team your team and therefore cannot rely on anyone else to guide your group through the different shows. ‘Conversely, they often do not feel autonomously competent, but depend too much on the leadership and opinion of others. My experience as a head dancer has revealed that although I do not rely on others to lead my team, I do get affected by others opinions and I also find myself second guessing choreography, if for example a member of my team has questioned a part of the show.

Greben discusses this theme of a lack of leadership further in his section on Psychological aspects of career transition. All the head dancers in parkdean have the support of their manager, choreographer of the company and the casting manager, however it is up to the head dancer to communicate with these authorities so they can feel supported. ‘When working with dancers in transition, they need to be shown that they are most likely multi-talented, and their intelligence is probably high, but that they have been under-developed. Many adult dancers fear, from the protected position of their life training and in companies that they will not be up to the outside world’s expectations and demands. Thus they require support, guidance, and training for more autonomous functioning. ‘I can really relate to this, the training I received at Dance College encouraged me to rely on the opinion of others and to be led by my teachers and dance captains.

Although this article focuses on the psychological issues that dancers face when transitioning into a new role I feel that a lot of the information provided relates to issues I have faced within my first season as a head dancer and therefore I feel it will benefit others in my situation.