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From Employment to Projects: Work

and Life in Contemporary Dance World
Dunja Njaradi
Published online: 15 May 2014.

To cite this article: Dunja Njaradi (2014) From Employment to Projects: Work and Life
in Contemporary Dance World, Text and Performance Quarterly, 34:3, 251-266, DOI:
10.1080/10462937.2014.911951
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Text and Performance Quarterly

Vol. 34, No. 3, July 2014, pp. 251266

From Employment to Projects: Work and

Life in Contemporary Dance World

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Dunja Njaradi

This essay discusses the question of labor in contemporary dance using the frame of
broad changes in contemporary economy that generate some intensive debates on
immaterial labor, new modes of production, precarity, and austerity across different
disciplines. Dancers around the world are affected by these changes, and this essay
reflects on current dance labor practices by addressing terms such as projects, mobility,
and time in the organization of work. I hope both to broaden a discussion on dance
labor and to map out anxieties, fatigue, and fear that characterize the Zeitgeist of
contemporary artistic labor.
Keywords: Contemporary dance; Modes of production; Immaterial labor; Precarity;
Mobility

The problem of the destiny of art in our time has led us to posit as inseparable
from it the problem of the meaning of productive activity, of mans doing in its
totality. (Agamben 68)

With a variety of responses from many performance studies scholars, a recent issue of
Text and Performance Quarterly saw a passionate discussion around topics of teaching,
learning, and disseminating knowledge within performance studies and the conditions
that make these processes (im)possible. The themes in question framed the discussion
at hand through solidarities around day-to-day struggles of creating and maintaining
performance studies praxis within often hostile institutions (Terry 223). Although
Dunja Njaradi is a Postdoctoral Research fellow in the Department of Performing Arts in the Faculty of Arts and
Media at the University of Chester, United Kingdom. Her research interests include traditional, folk, and
contemporary dance forms under globalization. I am grateful to the anonymous reviewers whose critical and
encouraging comments helped me develop this essay to its final shape. I am also grateful to the University of
Chester for giving me time and support to develop my research interests. Finally, I am forever grateful to the
dancers who were a vital part of this research, especially to Cosmin Manolescu, Ziya Azazi, and Igor Koruga.
Correspondence to: Dunja Njaradi, Department of Performing Arts, Faculty of Arts and Media, University of
Chester, Parkgate Road, Chester, CH1 4BJ, UK. Email: d.njaradi@chester.ac.uk.
ISSN 1046-2937 (print)/ISSN 1479-5760 (online) 2014 National Communication Association
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10462937.2014.911951

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252 D. Njaradi

most of the articles referred to the censorship incident at Villanova University in 2012,
an underlying topic was certainly the question of labor of performance either inside or
outside academy. For instance, D. Soyini Madisons essay most directly addresses these
phenomena by, first, questioning the meaning of labor in performance and, second, by
challenging performance people (209) to re-think conditions of labor in general that
bring inexplicable suffering in the world. The Performance Studies international
conference held in Leeds, United Kingdom, in 2012, also oriented its program call
around questions of economy, labor, and industry. Questions raised by the organizers
were, for example: How much do we work per week? and Where does the work end
and life begin? thus exploring shifts in performance industries and labor markets that
influence the work and meaning of performance-oriented work. In the 2012 PMLA
special issue on work, Vicky Unruh directly relates the choice of topic to the 2008
financial crash that shook the international financial system (733), while a 2010 issue of
Journal for Cultural Research testifies to a remarkable rise in studies of creative and
cultural labor in recent years (Hesmondhalgh 231). Finally, a 2012 special issue of TDR:
The Drama Review raised the problem of labor in arts through the topic of precarity
and the political action regarding contemporary neoliberalism and the scene of
performance-based art (Ridout and Schneider 5). It seems that the topic of artistic and
academic labor is increasingly gaining in currency. Probably the most comprehensive
book on labor in performance to date is Shannon Jacksons Social Works, in which she
questions the aesthetic autonomy of art in relation to intersecting social, political, and
institutional economies. In line with Jackson, Judith Hameras Dancing Communities
analyzes the aesthetic and affective work of dance by looking at labor of dance
technique in several dance communities in the Los Angeles, CA, area. In this study, as
well as in The Labors of Michael Jackson, Hamera discusses the relationships among
technique, virtuosity, and the changing political economy of work in America. An
interesting timeline is worth noting here. In the preface to the 2011 paperback edition
of Dancing Communities, four years after the first edition, Hamera gently re-frames the
whole book through the recent phenomena that threaten various world-making dance
forms and practices through commercialization (xi). Her point is not to ponder the
difference between high art dance and its commercial, popular forms, but rather to
explore the points of their convergence: at the intimate coupling of dance and
precarious (xii). There is a slight terminological convergence at play here as well: in
four years, the term precarious and precariat entered the general vocabulary of labor
discourses, especially including, artistic labor. A similar change is apparent in Nicholas
Ridouts musings on theatrical labor. In Stage Fright, Animals, and Other Theatrical
Problems, he addresses, in an indirect way, the issues of labor in theatre, that is, the
profound invisibility of the actual labor in the consumption of performance (see also
Rayner). Ridout reports on the slightly neurotic way in which theatrical labour is
discussed (101), which rarely rises to a political issue in any meaningful way. Only six
years after this statement, Ridout will edit the abovementioned issue of TDR, thus
directly addressing this genuine state of affairs (Ridout and Schneider 7) in a most
political way. Artists themselves are responding to an emergent precarity of their
social and economic statuses. In the United Kingdom, it is the work of The

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From Employment to Projects

253

Dangerologists, a dance-theatre group consisting of Broderick Chow and Tom Wells,

who look at working life and labor through the prism of precarity. They explore these
phenomena both through their performance work and through workshops and
discussions. In Belgrade, Serbia, in November 2013, Slovenian dancer and performer
Saa Rakef performed a piece called Saa Rakefs Debt, in which she tried to explore
and probe into new dialogues about personal debt in order to understand global practical
strategies in facing the debt crisis. Rakefs point of departure is her growing debt and
blocked bank account, as well as its influence on the dynamics of her everyday life.
The discussions, publications, and performances above questioned the topic of
artistic and academic labor through changes in modes of labor and production in
neoliberal capitalism, which brought about major structural changes across wide
ranges of economy, education, and cultural industries. This is the reason independent
artists (whether visual, performance, or fine art), academics, and more generally
cultural workers can understand and relate to these phenomena. In this article,
however, I focus on labor in the world of contemporary dance. Historically, labor in
dance studies has been investigated mostly through discussions of dance in relation
to labor movements (Graff; Franko; Morris) and/or national politics (Martin).
Following the recent scholarship outlined in the introduction, I tackle this question
by addressing the more global changes in the regime of work under the dominance of
communication industries and service work (Hardt and Negri) and the consequences
of this change for dancers. The dancer will be analyzed as a paradigmatic example of
the immaterial worker whocompared with other immaterial labor, which is
today hegemonic in producing goods and delivering serviceshas a primary
dignity (Negri 218). I will discuss this phenomenon in relation to the several
interrelated aspects of contemporary dance labor framed under projects, mobility,
and time. In dance, this topic gained some urgency within recent research about the
methodology of analysis in dance scholarship (Giersdorf) or the methodology of
creating dance/choreography (Spngberg). The mind/body split of the dancers labor
connected to labor and modes of production is also important for dance scholarship.
Jens Richard Giersdorf, for instance, discusses the intellectual/manual split in dance
scholarship that occurred through the nineteenth-century and twentieth-century
educational systems, while Jackson similarly suggests that the opposition between
intellectual and manual labor (or even theory and practice) is a false one insofar as it
ignores institutional genealogies of knowledge formation (Professing Performance 5).
Certainly performance artists today increasingly seek refuge in the academy and away
from ever-so-precarious and insecure artistic and cultural public sectors. Dancers
read philosophy! But they are equally required to be managers, administrators,
techniciansand also, but only in the last instanceto dance. Priorities are, it seems,
elsewhere.
Maybe a digression is needed here. My interest in modes of labor in dance began in
2008, when, as a doctoral student, I conducted ethnographic fieldwork among several
dance communities in Europe and with selected male dancers. I focused on the dance
communities in southeast Europe, most notably in Serbia, Romania, Macedonia, and
Turkey, and my research topic was on gender and labor in contemporary dance in

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254 D. Njaradi

Europes immediate outside (Jansen). The major part of this research was carried out
in different periods from 2008 to 2010, during which time I traveled to several
countries to conduct interviews or simply to spend time with the dancers in question,
watching them perform, rehearse, or run workshops. Although I focused on four male
dancers, I included numerous other dancers, cultural workers, and managers in this
study. In addition to approximately thirty official (recorded) interviews, I drew upon
informal conversations and observations. The dancers with whom I worked all have
different visibility in professional danceit was my intention, however, to work with
ordinary dancers whose professional and life practices often go unreported. These life
practices are, nevertheless, connecting tissues of the contemporary dance world.
Finally, as this research expands over several years, I was challenged and forced to reexamine some of the findings, and to note subtle but existing changes between 2008
and 2013 on international and local dance scenes. The global financial downturn of
2008, which turned into a prolonged and painful fiscal crisis, had a major effect on
dance communities in Europe and wider. The massive cuts in financial support for arts,
culture, and education left their imprint on the independent artistic and cultural
scenes, both in the European Union and the bordering countries, especially since
many depended on the same European Union funding bodies. These scenes found
themselves in dire circumstances. The final fieldwork on this essay was conducted in
September 2013 in Belgrade, when I included additional material and gained a fresh
perspective and again was faced with the fact that small, almost imperceptible shifts did
take place. These shifts are connected with the financial crisis and will be noted duly.
October 2009: I am in Montpellier, France, where the prestigious Six Months,
One Location program, organized by Xavier Le Roy and Bojana Cveji, is taking
place. I am visiting a dancer who is participating in this program and we are sitting
in the communal kitchen where other dancers are in the process of preparing their
evening meals and seemingly relaxing. They are talking among themselves, and the
conversation revolves around jobs/money/projects, along with gentle gossip about
people in the field and the so-called star figures. Some of the present dancers, I
learn later, are also doctoral students. The way these dancers talked about what they
do and what seems important (and what bothers them as well) corresponds to Paolo
Virnos writings on the subjectivities in contemporary labor regimes, which now
employ the fundamental abilities of the human being (thought, language, selfreflection, the capacity for learning) (40).
I soon discovered that these dancers are extremely articulate about what they do,
about projects they are pursuing. In these conversations, the word choreography
was almost obsolete and the understandings of what constitutes the work and world
of contemporary dance were diverse. In a way, this situation is not exclusive to the
world of dance. In his study on deskilling in arts after the readymade, John Roberts
discusses a figure of contemporary artist that he terms post-Cartesian artist, which
is not a name for a particular kind of artist or even a particular kind of artistic
virtue, but, rather, convenient shorthand for a number of different social and
cultural tendencies which have gathered force since the first two decades of the
twentieth century. (102)

From Employment to Projects

255

Contemporary dancers are affected in the same way with a plethora of social and
cultural tendencies, and above all with dramatic changes in a wider economy. Dance
skill is no longer defined by what the body can do, but by the way the body
interconnects with other bodies and spaces, and this is where the importance of
immaterial labor should be discussed.

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Immaterial Labor
In recent times, the economy of the Western world has been transformed dramatically
from a Fordist model to a new, postindustrial one. As authors such as Linda
McDowell have shown, for a growing number of individuals entering the wage labor
market, this has involved an evident change in working conditions compared to those
of previous workers, especially those of manufacturing industries. This change is the
key motif of recent theoretical discussions on waged work, termed new capitalism,
post-Fordism, and liquid modernity (McDowell). Whatever term is used, a basic
feature of this is a switch from the manufacturing economy of the past to the service
economy of the present. For the purpose of this discussion, the other important aspect
of the shifts in new capitalism is the fact that in many economic sectors management
remodelled labour practices on cultural values associated with artistic labour (nonhierarchical collaboration, flexibility of response, trust-based exchange, and non-linear
procesuality) (Doogan 186). These tendencies are discussed in some detail by Jon
McKenzie in Perform or Else, in which he compares performance paradigms across
different disciplines and sectors of society. According to Michael Hardt and Antonio
Negri, immaterial labor is labor that produces immaterial goods, such as a service, a
cultural product, or communication. In this sense, they identify the postindustrial
economy as an informational economy insofar as [t]he jobs for the most part are
highly mobile and involve flexible skills, they are characterized by the central role
played by knowledge, information, affect, and communication (285). Similarly,
according to Arif Dirlik the new worker [who is] modelled after the symbolic-analyst
is a closer approximation of the precapitalist artisan who has far greater control over
product, and the process of production (197). In the field of dance studies, it is Sally
Gardner who questions dancemaking relations of production between dancer and
choreographer and the way this relation has been conceived or imagined through
conceptual tools of dance scholarship. She states that aesthetic modernism and dance
scholarship conceived dancerchoreographer relations through a strict division of
labor (dancing vs. choreography). This aesthetic division can be further elucidated in
terms of industrial modernity
[b]y linking the ideology of the disembodied work of art to a particular,
dominant mode of economic production . The idea of production arising as it
does within capitalism, suggests a subsuming of several arts within a totality
controlled and directed from the position outside of those arts. (Gardner 40)

If, following Gardner, we conclude that modernist thought had difficulties in conceiving
of dancer and choreographer other than within a division of labor, then we may ask what

256 D. Njaradi

the situation with postmodern1 thought is. In fact, Gardner claims that modern
thought privileged the finished producta work of art (which in terms of dance would
be the choreography)over a process of production (intersubjective and intercorporeal
relationships between dancer and choreographer in the process of creating dance). The
next section expands on these shifts from product to process and their significance for
understanding dance labor.

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Projects
It is precisely this shift in modes of production and subsequent thinking about
production from work of art to process of production that represents the biggest
challenge in making and understanding dance work. The importance of this change
in the world of contemporary dance cannot be overstated. The concerns with modes
of production are directly related to the modes of representation. Dancers
increasingly question if the mode of production can affect and change modes of
representation (see Bojana Bauer 21). In Exhausting Dance, Andr Lepecki addresses
new ways of thinking about dance production, asserting that dancers/choreographers
are now working on dismantling a stable product of dance, that is, choreography.
Instead, there is an emphasis on the processintercorporeal relations between
dancer and choreographer, dancer and audience. We can say that the research into
this relationship is what dancers are primarily interested in, as they move from
working on dance productions/pieces toward dance projects. Bojana Kunst suggests
that the work that goes into creating a performance takes on a performative
dimensionit is a process in itself and therefore demands an audience (84). The
project is definitely a buzzword of contemporary capitalism and perhaps Isabell
Lorey is correct in her rather bleak view that the projects are simply short-term,
insecure, and low-wage jobs that are becoming normal for the bigger part of
society: precarization is in a process of normalization (qtd. in Puar 164). The actual
dance performance as such (the project outcome) is the least important as the project
is not designed to produce a performance. Rather, the project itself is a performance,
and the project/performance is, life itself.
We can relate this to the way in which Luc Boltanski and ve Chiapello define the
new spirit of capitalism as project oriented, defined through activity rather than
through work. This activity cannot stand for traditionally conceived work since it
is intended precisely toward dismantling the opposition between work and leisure,
but it can be only understood as life itself. Life
[that is] conceived as a series of projects .What is relevant is to be always
pursuing some sort of activity, never to be without a project, without ideas, to be
always looking forward to, and preparing for, something along with other persons
whose encounter is the result of being always driven by the impulse of
activity. (169)

It is precisely in the name of artistic freedom and more generally a better life that
French dancer Xavier Le Roy embarked on a dance career. He admits that when he
started thinking about a dance career (he is also a professional biologist) he was

From Employment to Projects

257

attracted to the idea of dance work, which was quite different from the work of the
biologist in a laboratory. To him,

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it meant somehow a confusion between the idea of leisure time and working time,
another role and a different mode of living which I imagined being a different
understanding of the society [but later] I realized that actually this mode of life
made of activities where the border between work, leisure, productive, unproductive are confused, became a mode of life imposed by the transformation and the
development of what Luc Boltanski and ve Chiapello call the new spirit of
capitalism. (Le Roy n. pag.)

Thus, it seems dancers are largely, if only intuitively, aware of the hidden catch
connected with the confusion of labor and leisure. But, how did this change happen?
Bojana Bauer connects changes in European choreography during the 1990s with the
shift in work following the dismantling of stable companies that precipitated a lot of
talk about the socio-political status of the independent performing artist (15). She
continues: [m]ultiplying not only projects but statuses and positions as well, and
exceeding the frames of what is determined as work, the independent artist is most
often identified as the paradigmatic exponent of immaterial labour (1516).
Similarly, Frdric Pouillaude discusses changes in European dance practice, using
the example of the French dance scene and identifying features of mutation:
The first feature consists of the dissolution of fixed companies. The team of stable
and salaried collaboratorswhat one formerly called company is replaced by
temporary local coalitions, individuals handling their own artistic careers in an
autonomous way, gathering around a defined project. (131)

He claims, however, that this intermittence is no longer something we should lament,

as, according to him it was not due to economic factors. Thus, the regime of
intermittence is not a compensation for an ideal salary-earning situation that everyone
should strive to reach; rather it simply accompanies, at a social level and in an
absolutely essential way, a liberation fully assumed by the actors (131). Pouillaude
seems to claim that the socioeconomic change of status of artists simply followed their
own desires for change. However, he is aware this shift in the modes of work and
systems of arts funding also have a defining influence on aesthetic autonomy. Taking
this issue further, Toni DAmelio explains the inclination of contemporary French
choreographers to explore philosophical concepts in their work in a similar manner,
arguing that the emergence of a particular dance aesthetic in the late twentieth century
can be partly understood through the mutual dependence of dance and state funding.
She states that
[t]he way in which funding is applied for and distributed may also be fostering the
conceptual turn of French contemporary dance. Civil servants looking over a
choreographers grant application may not know how to read choreography, but
they may have read Barthes, for example, and this is shared culture on which
aspiring choreographers can call. Neither does dance scholarship escape this circle
of mutually constituting influences. (100)

This particular conceptual turn in French dance DAmelio attributes to the changes
in artistic labor, wherein artists increasingly depend on sporadic grant applications,

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258 D. Njaradi

even if theatres in France are heavily subsidized by the state in comparison with
other European states.2 My research material, however, profoundly challenges and
destabilizes the question of specific national and cultural policies. The dancers I
worked with all have, to a degree, international careers, providing, of course, that
they have the right passports or work permits. Theatres in France may have been
heavily subsidized by the state, but that does not make much difference to Serbian or
Romanian dancers working in France. Actually, Igor Koruga, one of the interviewed
dancers, is trying to build up his career in Berlin and Belgrade simultaneously,
struggling to root himself firmly in both cities (although he works on projects in
other European cities as well). He admitted how he increasingly experiences salient
closing doors policies across Europe: in the sense that without correct work
permits it is more and more difficult to find support.3 This trend is increasingly
evident in the last few years. According to Koruga, international scenes of Sweden
and Germany (where he does most of his work), are slowly becoming more national
by supporting local artists only. Living in Berlin without a permanent work permit,
Koruga experiences what he calls a constant state of temporarity (he even retermed contemporary dance as temporary dance), and he talks about his precarious
position:
Ive told you already how the situation is in the state of constant insecurity, an
insecure life. Maybe it is important to note that whenever I talk to the people from
different professions, they are always impressed, it all looks fascinating to them.
They see you travel, you meet a lot of new people. But in reality its one hell of
an exhaustive life. For me it is difficult because I find it tiresome to change bed[s]
every two-three weeks, to be in [a] different place, in a different city, to constantly
shift realities and contexts, to forget whom did I meet and when it all becomes
mentally overbearing. And health-wise all that changing of climates and
environments reflects badly on my health. Finally that sort of intensive life
where everything is temporary and somehow blurry, well, we talked about this
already. In fact, everything appears to be concrete and transparent but in reality
everything is superficial as if I dont know it all extends across your private
and professional lives.

Koruga summarized perfectly the intersections of private and professional in dancers

lives and the potential damages of project-led work. He also, however, opened up a
discussion on mobility and the constant movement that characterizes the lives of
ordinary dancers. This will be further explored in the next section.
Professional Dance and Global Mobility
The late twentieth century will be remembered as an age that put a definitive emphasis
on mobility over stasis. As a consequence, Aihwa Ong notes that [t]ransnational
mobility and maneuvers mean that there is a new mode of constructing identity, as well
as new modes of subjectification that cut across political borders (18). Increased
mobility has been theoretically connected with changes in the meanings of home and
community (Di Stefano; Kennedy and Roudometof), new forms of labor (Parreas;
Smith and Favell), and new forms of identity (DAndrea; Featherstone; Christiansen

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From Employment to Projects

259

and Hedetoft). Discussing the changes in the modes of artistic labor, Kunst asserts
contemporary artists are in the process of constant mobility that requires flexibility and
generates a sense of uncertainty. Nothing seems to be stable and solid except project
deadlines, and the sense of space is generated and experienced as a consequence of
mobility (29). Dance studies developed a specific, if somewhat limited, take on the topic
of dancers mobility. For instance, a whole issue of Dance Research Journal (Scolieri)
was dedicated to an investigation into the impact of immigration and mobility on
dance under globalization. Containing several articles about dance revivals in
immigrant communities and refugee camps across the world, this issue follows the
globalization of dance forms and their impact back home (Bosse; Chatterjea; Hamera
Answerability), as well as the historical impact of early-twentieth-century immigration to the United States on modern American dance (Foulkes; Graff). These studies
typically presupposed a clear separation between a back home culture and a new
adopted culture that challenged dancers and dance forms in numerous ways.
Sometimes this separation was seen as extremely dramatic, such as in the case of the
Cold War defection of Soviet ballet stars such as Rudolf Nureyev, Natalia Makarova,
and Mikhail Baryshnikov. As David Caute notes, [t]he ballet dancers defection was
the most spectacular of all: ovations, flowers, embracesthen, a flying leap to
freedom (qtd. in Scolieri x). Although these studies are immensely important, there is
an apparent lack of research concerning the mobility patterns of ordinary
professional dancers whose dance aesthetic cannot be seen as situated in the traumatic
rupture between back home and new cultures, but rather perceived as constantly
on an almost-schizoid move. In short, the scholarship mentioned above treats dance as
cultural currency, survival strategy, movement therapy, and social and political action.
On the contrary, I wish to draw attention to the mobility patterns in dance seen as a job,
and the dancer seen as a worker in the increasingly precarious creative industries.
Having conducted her doctoral research on a dance community in Brussels,
Belgium, dancer Eleanor Bauer rightfully questions and problematizes the notion of
community not only as a result of globalizationa questioning that challenges the
concept on numerous levelsbut also, more significantly, due to the nature of dance
work under globalization. Being a professional dancer herself, she is in a privileged
position to depict this new reality of dance work characterized by the constant
moving and complete lack of separation between the private and professional lives of
a dancer. She writes:
Now, when I look at my calendar and it appears more as a list of cities and
countries than anything else, I am aware of that which I was not critical of
before. When 90 percent of my contact with friends and loved ones is online
instead of in the flesh, I am aware of the chasm between social and professional
needs that grows within such mobility. When 80 percent of my friends are in the
performing arts field or are also professional relations, I am aware of conflation
between the social and professional spheres that takes place in this field. When I
pay rent and receive my mail in an apartment that I will only spend a total of two
non-consecutive months in in [sic] 2007, and when I only spend ten days a year in
the city I call home; when the only place I have voting power (however fictional it
may be) and pay taxes (however poorly they are spent) is a 24-hour commute

260 D. Njaradi

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away, and when I have people in three different cities asking me when I am coming
home; when I have my own toothbrush in three other cities when my entire
artistic career feels like it is on hold when my laptop is in the repair center, making
me realize that the new requirement for an artistic autonomy and productivity is
no longer A Room of Ones Own as Virginia Woolf would have it, but a Mac of
ones owna port for interconnection rather than a space for solitude I realize I
dont have to invent a performative answer to these issuesmy life has become
itself a performance of them. (60)

Eleanor Bauers comments are useful in understanding the mobility patterns of almost
all the dancers I interviewed. For instance, one of them owns a toothbrush in Vienna,
Italy, Istanbul, Turkey, and Grenoble, France. Furthermore, it is not only that there is
no time and space left for private life outside the professional sphere, but also that there
is less and less time left for rehearsals, which results in not only a quicker creative
process and a shorter lifespan for each project, but also an increase in the massive
strains and pressures put on dancers bodies. This aspect of dancers lives is not
sufficiently discussed in dance studies literature and certainly is not on the agenda of
the creative industries (see MacNeill). Although the question of training and body
work of dance is a topic for another essay altogether, it resurfaces again and again in
the narratives of the dancers I met and was lucky to work with. Concerns about
training, aging, and exhaustion were at the forefront of these narrativesmostly voiced
in relation to schedules, deadlines, or time in general.

I Dont Have the Time

Overwhelmingly, the dancers I interviewed had extremely busy schedules and they
barely found time to meet with mesome of the interviews were conducted on trains,
for example. Many of our discussions started with talking about project deadlines, hard
work, and lack of time for anything. For this reason, project-based work means that
sometimes these dancers do not know if they are going to be paid for it or not. To
Vassilis Tsianos and Dimitris Papadopoulos, the expression I dont have the
timewhich I heard so many times during my researchis an explicit statement
of the contemporary workers subjectivity. This includes an embodied experience of
restless movement across the continuous time of life, that is, intermingling work and
non-work, work and leisure, and so on. Drawing on Karl Marxs notion of labor power
and alienation, Tsianos and Papadopoulos conclude that the expression I dont have
the time is the paradigmatic figure for the subjective internalization of non-disposal
over ones own labour power (10). For Marx, too, labor power is a function of time:
what a worker sells and what distinguishes him or her from the slave is his or her
capacity to reproduce labor power for a limited amount of time. Daniel A. Novak,
following Marx, concludes: The laborer is only free to become a commodity once the
reproduction of his or her body becomes both a function of time and an embodiment
of timewhat Marx calls a quantity of congealed labour-time (137). Thus, the
dissolution of the distinction between work and non-work time is what renders
problematic the new regime of work. Since the immaterial laborer cannot sell his or her

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From Employment to Projects

261

labor power for any fixed length of time, in exchange for a fixed wage, he or she
resembles the slave more than the worker. This resemblance is often recognized by the
workers themselves albeit in unexpected ways. Andrew Ross, for instance writes about
so-called Webshops that characterize developing media industries wherein jobs
comprise of flexible, part-time contracts, and eighty-five-hour workweeks without
employment benefits and health care. These conditions paradoxically create employees so complicit with the culture of overwork and burnout that they have developed
their own insider brand of sick humor about being net-slaves, that is, its actually cool
to be exploited so badly (12). A similar situation is noted by Adam Arvidsson, Giannio
Malossi, and Serpica Naro, who explored working patterns in Milans fashion industry.
They reported how despite being mostly underpaid and overworked, fashion workers
in Milan, Italy, expressed high levels of job satisfaction and considered their work
generally gratifying. Arvidsson, Malossi, and Naro describe these workers as creative
precariat.
In this light we can explain the scenarios that resurfaced quite often in the
narratives of the dancers I met (although they tended to have much gloomier
perspectives of their jobs). For example, a Romanian dancer runs an almost entirely
virtual cultural organization, the existence of which depends on insecure funding.
Just for the time being, he is able to employ people and rent an office space. When
there is no money, the organization is the dancer himself with his computer in his
home. Likewise, many dancers conveyed desperation after none of the projects they
were working on for a while were approved, meaning that they were not going to be
paid at all for the work they had already done. Or take the account of a Serbian
dancer, who states that he is always on the verge of starvation since his work is of the
kind that earns him a fair amount of money per project, but then there are not
enough projects to keep him going. A parallel narrative was provided by a Turkish
dancer: he believes he is paid fairly well per performance, but there is no money for
the creation and rehearsal process at all. Similarly, the Romanian dancer revealed
that a serious back injury had a major impact on his professional life, resulting in
career re-orientation. He stopped dancing and started working on cultural and dance
management in Romania. He describes the reasons for his career change as follows:
Last year, I was still dancing in one of my first productions Serial Paradise which
I created in 2003 and last year we had five or six performances in different cities:
Amsterdam, Berlin, Rotterdam. And I was really feeling like.There is a
moment when you do the lighting for the performance, when you do management,
when you do performance; it is not possible anymore. So, I made the decision to
stop dancing at least for a while. Also my body is getting old and without the
possibility of doing training every day it is impossible to continue working on so
many projects. One has to travel, to always be getting on the plane, to adapt to
different situations. (Manolescu)

What is interesting here, and what generally comes across in all the narratives of the
dancers I interviewed, is the interconnection among issues of aging, exhaustion, and
an overall feeling of fatigue. As seen from these remarks, dancers are now multiskilled total workers. Their job descriptions include technical developments and

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262 D. Njaradi

regular rehearsals (technical demands for dancers have increased over the years);
management and public relations for their projects; and the constant mobility that
requires immediate adaptation to new circumstances.
The social lives of dancers, as immaterial workers par excellence, certainly display
ambiguities inherent in concepts such as immaterial worker and the multitude as
discussed by Virno and Hardt and Negri. The ambivalent but still strong relation of
my interviewees to their nation states shows the fragility of this new social class in
terms of defining a common ground of political action. This is evident through their
stories of survival within artistic and cultural sectors during the economic crisis of
2008. These stories of survival mark what Tsianos and Papadopoulos see as a
vacuum of protection that characterizes contemporary immaterial work, which is
the almost existential condition of vulnerability felt as constant state of being in
every moment of everyday life (12).
Still, the investigation of dancers lives has great importance for understanding our
contemporary political present; not because they are paradigmatic examples of
immaterial laborers, but because they are living labor in general. Contrary to Hardt
and Negri, who emphasize the importance of immaterial workers in understanding
contemporary labor and conceptualizing resistance, Tsianos and Papadopoulos
assert that [d]eterritorialisation in post-Fordism cannot be conceived in relation to
immaterial labour itself but in relation to the imperceptible experiences of the
possibilities and oppressions pertinent to living labour (18). Tsianos and Papadopoulos contrast living labor against immaterial labor to chart what they term the
condition of contemporary cognitive capitalism. Thus, they claim that
[t]he constitutive moment of contemporary system of production is not primarily
its cognitive quality but its embodied realisation. In an attempt to overcome the
somatophobia of the cognitive capitalist approaches we want to discuss the
composition of living labour as an excess of sociability of human bodies. (19)

Since dances work is to create affective sociability and to transform the space in
which it dwells, it is where dance comes in as a paradigmatic example of living labor.
This is not, again, to allocate to dance (performance) a certain default position of
resistance, but to pave the way to understanding dance as living labor, and living
labor (its possibilities and oppressions) as the driving force of contemporary
capitalism. Thus conceived, a focus on dance studies brings us back to the question
of the weaving together of ones personal and professional life in artistic work. In
writing about the life and work of early-twentieth-century dancer Doris Humphrey,
Marcia B. Siegel questions the kinds of affective attachments artistic life and work
employ in order to continue with the practices wherein sacrifice [is] so great and
monetary rewards so poor (70). Finally, it is precisely this perspective on the
practice of the everyday life in the world of professional dance that may illuminate
the shaping of cultural practices and formation of emerging identities, as well as
outline alternative political strategies of the future.

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263

Postscript: Belgrade 2013

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September 2013: In Belgrade, Koruga explained the profoundly exhaustive nature of

his life as a freelance dancer. Humorously, he described his life as a constant rush for
visibility and continuous grant-application activities:
Bojana Cveji illustrated the situation correctly through the example of that
cartoon character Wile E. Coyote chasing after the Road Runnerand somehow
that constant rush for something. Sometimes, it makes me wonder what exactly
am I chasing after? What am I fighting for? I mean you are constantly in the mode
of applying for somethingconstantly writing applications. We were already
talking about the kind of life this is. Basically, you are getting off your parents
support to become dependent on some institutions which support you for the time
being. In fact, its all very sad in a way. Its one profoundly lonely life, you are
always on your own.

A thought struck me here suddenly. When I began this research in 2008, although
some disparate voices were tackling the topic tentatively and/or indirectly (see Bojana
Bauer; Kunst) discussions of artistic labor connected with new forms of capitalism
were almost nonexistent. As outlined in the introduction, this situation changed
completely, and there is an increasing interest in precarious labor. For instance, when
asked if dancers themselves and amongst themselves discuss the question of labor,
Koruga reiterated that dancers not only talk about it, but they talk about is so much
that it became almost like a fashion. This move is significant. Further, it is worth
noting that the way Koruga talked about this trend did not leave much room for
optimism or change.
This shift toward the visibility of the problem that nevertheless does not harbor its
solution, is the shift, I believe, from the acute experience of crisis (in this instance
global economic crisis) to normalization, coupled with the process of the physical
wearing out of a population that Lauren Berlant calls slow death. The accounts of
my interviewees, especially in more recent interviews, denote exactly this wearing
out: being constantly on the move but not getting anywhere; always working (if you
are lucky, that is), but always earning just enough; feeling exhaustion and health
deterioration; and feeling helpless. Perhaps adopting the notion of slow death at the
end of this essay is an ample, if bleak, endeavor to look at dance in the spaces of
ordinary life. It is to look at dance not as a performance (event), but as a plethora of
mechanisms that make it possible (or not). To invoke Berlant again:
Slow death prospers not in traumatic events, as discrete time-framed phenomena
like military encounters and genocides can appear to do, but in temporal
environments whose qualities and whose contours in time and space are often
identified with the presentness of ordinariness itself, that domain of living on, in
which everyday activity; memory, needs, and desires; diverse temporalities and
horizons of the taken-for-granted are brought into proximity. (75960)

This texture of the ordinary lives of ordinary dancers did not approach dance
performances as events that make out-of-ordinary and extra-ordinary interventions into ordinary lives. Rather, I analyzed the out-of-ordinariness of ordinary life
as a discrete but salient backdrop of artistic performance work. Although focusing on

264 D. Njaradi

the increasingly important and emergent topic of labor in dance, I illuminated, I

hope, that all performance is socialto follow Jackson broadlyas it depends on
various social, political, and institutional economies, which often remain hidden in
the appreciation of artistic work. These economies are also something that each artist
unwittingly has to negotiateit is the dilemma that Koruga faces when placing his
practice:

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I was always interested in collective, social situations to explore in my work and

this is where my artistic allegiances lie. The difficulties with this kind of work
are. How to avoid community art? How to avoid communism that we have had
in real socialism but not by becoming the opposite? These are the questions I will
be grappling with all my life.

Notes
[1]
[2]

[3]

The term postmodern is not without its difficulties. In this article, by postmodernity I
mean contemporary modernity as outlined in Hardt and Negris Empire.
Unlike Lepecki and Pouillaude, DAmelio localizes the new turn in contemporary dance to
a particular French avant-garde scene. Notwithstanding the differences in understanding, the
dance phenomena they each describe is the same.
The citizens of the non-European Union bordering states, including the citizens of Romania
and Bulgaria, which are European Union states, need secure, permanent jobs in order to
obtain valid work visas, which is difficult for artists whose work is usually short-term and
contract-based. Alternatively, dancers may acquire yearly stipends for short-term projects
(for instance, Tanzstipendium by Berliner Kulturverwaltung) or they can enroll in education,
thus acquiring student statuses and visas. All of these options are, at best, temporary.

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