COUNSELLING FOR DANCERS

“But What Else Can I Do?”

The transferable skills dancers already possess

Terry Hyde MA MBACP FRSA

Who this is for When considering transferable skills for dancers, it can be surprising to discover how many have already been developed through training and performance. Professional dancers and vocational students considering work beyond performance, whether by choice or because circumstances have changed.

Alex had danced professionally for several years when a contract came to an end. After months of wondering what else they could possibly do, Alex accepted a junior role with an events company.

Within a short time, Alex was coordinating several projects, managing changing schedules, communicating with different departments and remaining calm when something went wrong at the last minute. Colleagues saw someone organised, creative, dependable and very good at working with people. Alex thought they were learning everything from the beginning. In reality, many of the abilities behind their success had been developed in the studio and on stage.

The six skills employers are looking for

The Skills Imperative 2035, a five-year research programme led by the National Foundation for Educational Research (NFER) and funded by the Nuffield Foundation, examined how the labour market in England is likely to change by 2035.

The programme identified six Essential Employment Skills expected to become increasingly important: collaboration; communication; creative thinking; information literacy; organising, planning and prioritising; and problem solving and decision making.[1]

NFER’s analysis indicates that these human abilities will complement technology and be especially important in professional and associate professional occupations, where much future employment growth is projected.[1]

The scale of the challenge is considerable. NFER estimated that, in 2023, around 3.7 million workers in England—13 per cent of the workforce—had substantial deficiencies in these skills. Without action, the figure could rise to around seven million workers, or 22 per cent, by 2035.[2] Its final report also estimated that one to three million jobs in declining occupations could disappear by 2035 if recent trends continue.[1]

The message is not simply that people will need qualifications. They will also need the human abilities that help them adapt, communicate, think, make decisions and work successfully with others.

When I read the six skills, my immediate thought was: dance training can develop every one of them.

Collaboration

Dance may look individual from the audience, particularly when someone is dancing a solo, but almost nothing about producing a performance is achieved alone.

Dancers learn to work as part of a company. They share space, adjust to one another, respond to partners and contribute to something larger than their own performance. They work with choreographers, teachers, rehearsal directors, musicians, stage management, wardrobe, lighting, healthcare teams and many others.

A dancer has to be aware of where other people are, what they need and how one person’s actions affect the whole production. If someone is absent, injured or replaced, the rest of the cast adapts. In partnering, collaboration also includes trust, responsibility, timing and awareness of another person’s safety.

A vocational student develops these abilities long before entering the profession. Every group class, rehearsal and production requires cooperation. It may simply be called “being part of the class”, “working as part of a cast” or “dancing in an ensemble”, but an employer would recognise it as teamwork and collaboration.

Communication

Dancers communicate continually, even when they are not speaking.

They communicate through movement, expression, timing and physical awareness. They learn to read subtle signals from a partner, conductor, teacher or someone standing in the wings. They listen to corrections, retain detailed instructions and respond quickly to changes.

Verbal communication is equally important. Dancers ask questions, discuss partnering, report an injury, clarify a call time and resolve misunderstandings in a pressured environment. Those who tour may communicate across different languages and cultures.

Many dancers underestimate this skill because so much of their communication has become instinctive. Yet listening carefully, absorbing information, noticing what is happening and adapting communication for different people are valuable in almost every workplace.

Creative thinking

Creativity in dance extends far beyond making up steps.

Every dancer interprets movement. Two people may perform the same choreography accurately yet bring something different to it. Dancers make choices about musicality, dynamics, expression, intention and how a role is communicated to an audience.

Creative thinking is also used when something is not working. A dancer may explore a different preparation for a step, alter the spacing, adapt movement around an injury or find another way to understand a correction. Choreographic work develops the ability to experiment, generate ideas and refine them through practice.

In employment, creative thinking means looking beyond the most obvious answer. It is used in business, education, healthcare, management, marketing and many other areas that may appear to have little connection with the arts.

Dancers spend years making creative adjustments within the demands of a technique, choreography or production. That is creativity in action.

Information literacy

“Information literacy” may be the least familiar of the six terms, but dancers deal with information from numerous sources every day.

They receive timetables, rehearsal schedules, casting information, call sheets, corrections, choreographic detail, musical cues, costume requirements and information about travel, nutrition, injury management and rehabilitation. They have to identify what is relevant, retain it and apply it at the appropriate moment.

A dancer returning from injury may receive information from a physiotherapist, doctor, teacher or rehearsal director, alongside the physical responses they notice in their own body. They need to bring that information together and understand what it means for that day’s class or rehearsal.

Work outside dance increasingly requires people to distinguish reliable information from opinion, misinformation and material generated by artificial intelligence. That critical element may need further development, as it does for anyone entering a new profession. However, many dancers already have a useful foundation: they are accustomed to receiving complex information, comparing it with what they know and turning it into action.

Organising, planning and prioritising

Vocational dance training demands a considerable amount of organisation.

Alongside daily classes and rehearsals, a student may manage academic work, travel, auditions, performances, conditioning, healthcare appointments, meals, costumes and the practicalities of living away from home. Professional dancers balance class, rehearsals, performances, touring, fitness, recovery and personal responsibilities.

A dancer learns that everything cannot receive equal attention at the same moment. Energy has to be managed. A demanding performance may affect what is sensible earlier in the day. Several roles may need to be rehearsed at once, with limited time available for each.

Dancers also understand deadlines. The curtain goes up at the advertised time; there is no opportunity to ask the audience to return next week because the company is not quite ready.

Planning backwards from a fixed outcome, organising the work and deciding what needs attention first are precisely what employers mean by organising, planning and prioritising.

Problem solving and decision making

Live performance is full of problems that must be solved quickly and, sometimes, without anyone else noticing.

A costume may catch. A prop may be in the wrong place. Spacing may change. A partner may enter late, the music may feel faster than expected or someone may become injured during a performance. The dancer assesses what is happening, makes a decision and continues.

The same process occurs in training. If a movement is not working, the dancer considers why: preparation, timing, placement, coordination, strength or understanding? Corrections are applied, the result assessed and another adjustment made.

This is a highly developed cycle of problem solving: observe, interpret, decide, act and evaluate.

Dancers often do this under pressure, while tired and in full view of other people. The capacity to remain composed and make an effective decision in those circumstances can be enormously valuable in another career.

Learning to recognise what is already there

Whether someone is a professional dancer leaving after a long performing career or a vocational student deciding that performing is no longer the right path, the transition can feel frightening.

Reasons for leaving may include injury, health, finances, a changing sense of identity, the end of a contract or simply the realisation that another life now feels more suitable. Moving away from performing does not erase the years of training or make them irrelevant.

I know this from my own life. When my performing career ended, I moved into business, financial services, public service and eventually psychotherapy. At first glance, these may appear to have little in common with dance and performance. Looking back, however, I can see the discipline, preparation, curiosity, creativity, teamwork, problem solving and ability to perform under pressure travelling with me into every new role.

The difficulty is often not an absence of transferable skills. It is that dancers have not been taught to recognise, evidence or describe them.

“I attended daily class and rehearsals” can become: “I managed a demanding schedule, prioritised competing responsibilities and maintained consistent standards.”

“I danced as part of a corps de ballet, chorus or other ensemble” can become: “I worked collaboratively within a team where timing, trust and individual accountability were essential to the final outcome.”

“I performed live” can become: “I delivered consistently under pressure and responded calmly to unexpected changes.”

“I took corrections” can become: “I received detailed feedback, processed it quickly and applied it to improve my performance.”

These are accurate descriptions of what dancers do, expressed in language an employer outside dance can understand.

Recognising transferable skills does not remove the need for role-specific knowledge, qualifications or technical training. Nor will every dancer possess every skill to the same degree. The next step is to choose genuine examples, explain what you did and show how the experience relates to the role you want.

A dancer entering another profession is not starting with nothing. They are bringing years of experience that may have been hidden behind the barre, the rehearsal schedule and the curtain.

The task is to recognise those abilities, value them and learn how to explain them. Then the question changes from “What else can I do?” to “Where else could these skills take me?”

Evidence note

How the evidence is used The six-skill framework and labour-market projections come from NFER’s Skills Imperative 2035 programme. The links between dance experience and those skills are Terry’s professional and lived analysis; they were not tested by NFER. Dance experience does not remove the need for job-specific qualifications or technical training, and individuals will differ in the strength of each skill.

References

1. Bocock, L., Scott, M. and Hillary, J. (2025). The Skills Imperative 2035: Creating a system of lifelong learning to provide the essential skills for tomorrow’s workforce. Final report. Slough: NFER. View source

2. Bocock, L., Del Pozo Segura, J. M. and Hillary, J. (2024). The Skills Imperative 2035: Rethinking skills gaps and solutions. Working Paper 4. Slough: NFER. View source

About Terry

Terry Hyde MA MBACP FRSA is a former professional dancer and a psychotherapist specialising in the emotional and mental health of dancers and performing artists. He founded Counselling for Dancers and STEPPS. Find out more at counsellingfordancers.com.

© Terry Hyde 2026. All rights reserved.