Turning point: inside the mind of a 30-something female modern dancer

Dance Magazine, Dec, 2005 by Rosalynde LeBlanc

A few months ago, at a time when I was particularly exhausted from the recurring insolvency of my freelance dancer lifestyle, I thought I had been granted a little monetary relief through an act of divine intervention. I was standing on the subway platform waiting for the downtown A train and absent-mindedly flipping through a local newspaper. Just a moment before, I had been holding the unopened paper over the trash can, but something told me to read it on the ride home. Amidst a flutter of newsprint, a familiar image caught my eye. Alongside a story about Bedell Winery of Long Island's 2001 reserve merlot, (which was having its celebratory release that weekend), was a picture of the bottle of wine. I couldn't believe my eyes. I was on the label.

It was a watercolor painting after a photograph of me that had been taken by Howard Schatz almost 10 years ago. The artist behind the impressionistic rendition was Eric Fischl, a highly esteemed painter in the contemporary art world. Despite the diluted detail of the figure, I recognized myself immediately. This limited edition was selling for $200 a bottle.

I hopped on the train and rode home with a windstorm of thoughts in my head. Does Howard Schatz know about this? Did he sell Fischl the photograph? What's my cut? Maybe I get a percentage of each bottle sold? I was on the label of a $200 bottle of wine! Surely it was not a coincidence that I had reconsidered throwing out the paper. There was money in this for me and a guardian angel was making sure I knew about it. I got home and planned out my phone calls: Howard Schatz, Bedell Cellars, Eric Fischl, and maybe even my cousin, the lawyer.

I called Schatz first. He said he knew about the label and told me that because it was a painting of his photograph and not the photograph itself, by law, it was considered an inspiration. There was no purchase of the photo, no copyright infringement, no money exchanged. At most, I could get a complimentary bottle of wine, but inspiration came free, he said.

I didn't make any more calls.

As the smoke cleared from my explosive financial fantasy, I felt embarrassed. Eric Fischl was an artist whose work I liked very much. Shouldn't I simply be honored to be an inspiration to him? Instead, my first thought was how much money I could make. But I couldn't help it; I'm a 30-something modern dancer.

In other words, I am someone who has spent all of her adult life in a career where the fattest recompense is the one which enriches the sense of self. My closets are full of rolls of dusty concert posters in foreign languages. Swollen scrapbooks are lodged on my bookshelf. My memory stocks an arsenal to combat dinner party lulls. And at the age when most people are just admitting to their dreams, I feel the profound satisfaction of having lived mine. I have invaluable wealth--the wealth of spirit. But now I'm ready to start a family. I can hear the ticking of that biological thing. And I'm broke.

The coarsest ways of making a buck are now appealing to me. For as nice as it is to stare at old pictures of myself or kick back with a glass of complimentary $200 merlot, it doesn't allay the terrot of bringing a child into the world without a permanent job and only $157 in the bank. Joining a dance company is not a viable option. Any modern troupe which pays its dancers a livable salary has to tour at least half of the year. I can't imagine lugging bags through 10 airports with a baby strapped to my breast and then finding babysitters in all those foreign cities. Nor would I want to leave the baby at home for six months while I travel the world. And what about the pregnancy? What modern dance company has enough money to pay maternity leave? They would sooner grab a 20-year-old who can cut her ties and come on the road than negotiate nausea and doctor's appointments with the ballooning mommy-to-be. Even if I could find a way to tour with a baby or had a gracious director who was willing to hold my job until I returned, trying to feed a child on a modern dancer's salary, where there are no contracts or any guarantees, would cause enough stress to rip open an artery. My husband has a permanent job but supporting a family on one middle-income salary isn't possible anymore.

Two years ago I started tackling this problem by going to Broadway auditions. Getting into a show seemed like the perfect solution to my problem. I could dance, make a lot of money, cushion the nest, quit the show after a few years, and then lie down and birth a happy family. I had only to ignite my pensive modern-dance synapses to fiery jazz dance execution--an easy task, I figured, since my desire for a large paycheck would translate into the ferocity and hunger that casting directors notice. At first, despite the call for "Equity Union Dancers Only," I would show up hoping to be seen. I quickly learned the ritual from the other non-Equity dancers who had my same steely determination. Non-Eqs (as we were referred to) would start an unofficial sign-up sheet at least an hour before the audition started. It was usually on a piece of paper ripped from the personal agenda of a fellow non-Eq. We would all form a huddle around the paper and jockey our way towards the communal pen in order to scribble our names beside the lowest possible number-an event resembling pigeons in a polite riot for the discarded chunk of bread. We could then only hope that the auditors would accept the unofficial list and see us after every Equity person had had her fair share of time. There were days when five hours would pass from my early arrival at the audition to the time I stepped in front of the table of auditors.