Dance? Is that even a real major?

[frazzled1]

<p>Though I hate to dignify the first trollish posts on this thread with an answer, I will say that I’ve wondered about the wisdom of choosing a dance major for one’s college education unless it’s at a school with an excellent reputation and track record for sending students on to careers in dance. College is expensive and becoming more so all the time. The Ailey/Forham program is a great example - if a student is accepted there, he or she certainly has the talent to have a professional career in dance. But even those students have to evaluate how they’ll feel if they graduate with a substantial amount of educational debt and are earning $30,000 a year. I looked online for a better current estimate of an average dancer’s salary but couldn’t find anything more recent than 2004, which wasn’t pretty:

Median hourly earnings of dancers were $8.54 in May 2004. The middle 50 percent earned between $6.71 and $15.62. The lowest 10 percent earned less than $5.87, and the highest 10 percent earned more than $21.59. Annual earnings data for dancers were not available, because of the wide variation in the number of hours worked by dancers and the short-term nature of many jobs-which may last for 1 day or 1 week-made it extremely rare for dancers to have guaranteed employment that exceeded 3 to 6 months. Median hourly earnings in the industries employing the largest number of dancers were as follows:
Performing arts companies $14.82
Other schools and instruction 14.94
Drinking places, alcoholic beverages 6.78
Other amusement and recreation industries 7.68</p>

<p>Median annual earnings of salaried choreographers were $33,670 in May 2004. The middle 50 percent earned between $21,530 and $48,940. The lowest 10 percent earned less than $14,980, and the highest 10 percent earned more than $68,190. Median annual earnings were $34,090 in “other schools and instruction,” a North American Industry Classification System category that includes dance studios and schools.

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