Research

PhD students’ workshop

"Dancers and lifestyles"

06.05.25 — 09:30

CN D Pantin

In the humanities, the job of dancing is often seen as a vocation. Choreographic artists who embark on their careers at an early age have to make sacrifices in order to maintain a demanding profession. The economic precariousness of the artist’s life goes along with emotional self-denial and physical pain, sometimes on a daily basis. Despite the difficulties involved in becoming a dancer, this profession also offers a singular social recognition, and a way of life sometimes described as “artistic” or “bohemian”. 

It therefore seems fruitful to combine a sociology of work with a sociology of daily life, in order to “grasp the different facets of an ‘artist’s life’ and analyze the transformations inherent in the socialization in the world of dance”. In short, what are dancers’ lifestyles?