National Dance Week on April, 2024: Is it too late to start a career in dancing?

National Dance Week 2024.

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Most people have no clue what it takes to become a professional dancer. 14 may be too late but it may not be, if you are born with the body, facility and musicality that a dance career requires. It just becomes a lot harder to do at 14 and taking a dance minor wont get you enough or the right training for a dance career.There isn't a whole lot of work out there and only 10% of the best trained dancers get work and only 10% of them can make a living at it. If dancers who have all the gifts for dance, who start when they were half your age and who end up dance majors at schools like Juilliard and NYU Tisch don't all get work, that should give you and idea of what the odds are for you to be successful. Serious dance training is not being on the school dance team. It means starting with ballet and it means taking about 15 hours or more of ballet classes a week at your age even though you don't want a ballet career, which you would be too old to start anyway. It means going to a decent ballet academy that is not recreational dance training. The fact that you say you are not very flexible speaks to your natural facility for dance. Yes, dance training will get you more flexible, but starting at your age and to be successful, you would have to be even more of a natural than most, as many professional dancers were born flexible to begin with. You haven't even started training yet and you don't know if you will be good at it or even if you like the training that is involved. But, if you really think you can do this and are willing to give up everything for a shot at it, you need to start taking daily ballet classes. Forget the tap and jazz because you wont have time for that because you need to play catch up. Dancers with strong ballet that is augmented with a codified modern training like Graham, Horton and Limon, can dance anything as then any other genre (except tap) just becomes different choreography. Many back up dancers in music videos never took any hip hop classes because with their dance training as professional dancers, it just became easy choreography to pick up. That too is another skill a professional dancer must have. The ability to almost instantaneously pick up choreography after being told or shown just once. If you can concentrate on ballet and then audition for a dance major at a top dance conservatory which will have you audition on ballet and modern dance, and get in and work even harder there, you may have a shot at it. BFA dance majors take about 6 hours of dancing a day. That degree is geared towards a performance dance career. A BA in dance take about half that amount and is geared towards teaching usually or dance management or opening a dance school. Dance minors have even less dance and are often for dancers who love to dance and just don't want to give it up. Often it doesn't even require an audition to get into a dance minor program. If you were going into dance promotion or dance management perhaps a minor would due for that. . Most top dance conservatories don't offer a minor in dance as that is not for a dance performance or even for a teaching career in dance.

*FYI-Danielle Peazer studied at the English National Ballet school and was trained in classical ballet. She also is trained in modern dance along with tap.

My advice is to start taking ballet classes ASAP and see how well you do and what gifts you have or don't have for dance. See if you are willing to give up all your spare time to take two 90 minute classes every day 5-6 days a week. You cannot start with that much on day one as you would be too sore, but start with 3-5 ballet classes a week and work your way up to 2 classes a day. Then see if you can add even more as you are far behind due to your late start. This is the reality of what it would take to attempt this and as I said before, it takes major sacrifice for a slim shot at it. Even doing all of this is still no guarantee that you will have a dance career, but it may give you a shot at it if you are talented and also pretty as dance jobs are also cast for looks. It is a performing art.

@Maya- Most dancers retire in their late twenties and early thirties and professional dance training is not even made available to dancers over 18. I would like to see one name of a dancer who started training in their mid thirties and has a dance career. There are none. Dance careers are for the young and ar over in a flash. There are men who have started in their mid to late teens who have been successful, but it is not the same for women. Men have different requirements as dancers and there is a whole lot less competition for work for men. You cannot skip ballet either and think you can become a professional dancer without it. It is like saying you can do calculus without learning how to do basic math first. You just cannot make up answers and say that that it is true when clearly anyone who knows anything about dance knows it isn't true.

What is the National Ballet Foundation?

Beats the heck out of me? There is a Russian National Ballet Foundation and Canada has one too, but there are endowment foundations, not dance companies. The only official National ballet of the USA is ABT. I have never heard them referred to as that. They start their season next week and are deep in rehearsals. I doubt anyone from there would have time for a master class. Try to get more information, and I will be glad to answer if I know the answer. If you have the name of the person giving the class, maybe I can help by letting you know who it is.

How do I get more dance hours?

Okay not going to sound harsh in anyway,,, but 4hours a week, will not get you in proffessional dance, I do 5hours-5 days a week and i do 7hours on a Saturday... i do 32hours a week... try that, its hard work, and i have been doing that for 14yrs now and im only 16yrs old. I want to become a Proffessional dancer so much, i have been entering competitions to get myself known, and been to Ballet schools auditions, i have been accepted onto Summer Intensive programmes and was also offered a Scholarship in America (but i didnt take it because of my School work).

So if you want to become a Proffesional dancer, then tbh change dance studios go with a Dance School that has a well known background, or go into dance classes that are a Higher Grade then you, or take more difference types of dance so you can push yourself more thats what i do and it pays off,, i do Ballet, Tap, Modern, Jazz, Lyrical, Irish, Greek, National, Pointe work, and many more. Also i would advise for you to get yourself well known as well, enter competitions and go to Dance Auditions for either Schools or Summer Programmes.

Also you have got to work really hard and have the time and dedication to get you there.

Hope this helps :)