The Stage

ENO dancers protest at ‘absurd’ pay conditions

Published Thursday 9 February 2012 at 10:45 by Matthew Hemley

Dancers working for English National Opera are calling for an overhaul of pay conditions, claiming their rate of less than £10 an hour is “disrespectful and absurd”.

The performers have won the support of professional organisation Dance UK, whose director Caroline Miller described dancers employed by ENO as those at “the top of their field”. She urged ENO to enter into discussions with the performers to “tackle their concerns”, claiming dancers are “a vital element” of ENO productions.

“Some people claim that as it’s an opera, dancers are on stage for less time than musicians, but in some productions they are not. It would be good if ENO could look at each show on a case by case basis, to see how much work dancers have to do and pay them accordingly,” she said.

An ENO dancer earns a minimum of £327 on a contract agreed with Equity for a 33-hour week, a figure that has not increased since 2010 and equates to £9.90 an hour. This works out a little more than £9 an hour if the dancers are engaged on the maximum 36 hours that can be required under their contracts. By contrast, performers working for Matthew Bourne’s company, New Adventures, earn a minimum of £415 per week in rehearsals and at least £477 a week when performances begin.

Three dancers currently working for ENO contacted The Stage about the issue of low pay at the company. One, who did not want to be named, said the rate he is paid is the lowest he has ever received. He claimed that if these pay conditions continue to be accepted, nothing will change for future dancers and that ENO, as one of Britain’s largest opera companies, “should be leading the way”.

“Instead it is employing performers on a regular basis for marginally over the national minimum wage. When the artistic contribution of every artist involved, including that of the dancers, is increasingly equal and integral to the success and quality of the production, then surely it is about time that this is recognised, both financially and respectfully,” he said.

Meanwhile, a dancer who has worked with ENO since 2008 said he feels “the pinch of surviving on such a small wage” each time he works there. He said he continued to take work with ENO because, as a professional freelance dancer, “you just want to work in your field”.

“Yet to be involved with England’s second largest opera company and to have my hard work and experience result in such a small wage often feels disrespectful and absurd,” he said.

The dancer added he had not queried the pay because “these companies are far too quick to dismiss their loyal and hardworking freelance” in favour of younger and cheaper performers.

Another dancer said the pay does not reflect the conditions dancers at ENO are expected to work under, claiming the company has “been highly inflexible in allowing to accommodate for people having other jobs to make up for the poor pay”.She said dancers “go a very long way for their art” and should be “respected and paid properly”.

Equity head of live performance Hilary Hadley stressed that ENO is heavily dependent on arts council subsidy and has recently suffered an 11% cut to its core funding. She added: “Additionally the dancers engaged in opera are on significantly different types of contracts than dancers engaged as dancers in a commercial production such as those undertaken under a New Adventures/Equity Agreement. They have different hours of work and numbers of performances. The dancers form a part of an opera for a small number of performances in repertoire.”

A spokesman for ENO said: “We cannot comment on individual contracts or payments as these are confidential between ENO and the individuals concerned.”