While sitting on a studio floor, Alexandra Basmagy, a corps de ballet dancer with the American Ballet Theatre who has been with the company for over a decade, describes hearing for years that the company has been experiencing financial challenges. “I just kept seeing all these things occurring for the company,” she tells Teen Vogue, mentioning new choreographers and new costumes — which she appreciated, though it also seemed to her that not enough was being spent on the artists themselves. Basmagy felt little was being done “in the favor of the lives of the dancers.”
On February 6, the American Guild of Musical Artists (AGMA) leadership and dancers and stage managers of American Ballet Theatre, one of the world’s most prestigious ballet companies, voted to authorize a strike, with artists voting 95.6% in favor of the action.
In 2006, the company was recognized as “America’s National Ballet Company” by an act of Congress. It boasts world-renowned stars of ballet throughout the company’s ranks, from the star power of soloists and principals to the precise excellence of the corps de ballet, the ensemble of dancers who dance as a group and are the backbone of ballet. The American Ballet Theatre (ABT) has a long legacy as an esteemed company, and what draws audiences into theaters is the caliber — and labor — of dancers. Basmagy says she has spent time replying to people who had commented that they’d cancel tickets or donations to the company, emphasizing that they want and need the public’s support.
Stage manager Luke Woods tells Teen Vogue that “the idea of not working is not something that any of us want.” But the overall feeling, he explains further, is that the lived reality for the artists, including compensation and the number of work weeks that are below industry standard, wasn’t being taken seriously. According to AGMA, ABT proposed salaries that would leave more than 20% of the company below a living wage for New York City. “And the shop was standing up and saying, ‘No, this is real. This is serious. We need change.’”
ABT declined Teen Vogue’s request for comment on AGMA allegations, citing the ongoing negotiations.
“They have said to us, 'We understand you're an integral part of the company,'” Basmagy adds. “It's like, ‘No, no, we are the company.’”
According to AGMA, only about 30% of artists at American Ballet Theatre earn a sufficient income from their salary to sustain themselves. Structural changes within ballet, in which systemic inequities across class, race, gender, and accessibility persist, continue to be called for. The strike authorization vote underscores that dancers are artists, but they’re also workers; their labor contributes value to a company — and they are standing together to ensure that compensation and workplace well-being better reflect that.
As Sam Wheeler, AGMA's national executive director, tells Teen Vogue, there is a pervasive culture in dance that instructs dancers to be obedient, to be seen and not heard, which has “historically led to tremendous workplace injustices.” Love of the work has long been used to try to justify not paying workers their fair share, including during the 2023 Writers Guild of America strike, when Warner Bros. Discovery’s CEO stated that “the love for working” would prompt underpaid workers to return to their jobs.
For workers making performances happen, that doesn’t hold up. “The love of the art is not going to pay my rent and for my groceries,” says Basmagy. Decisions, such as when someone is cut from a ballet, can come via email, she adds, “so they take that side of it when it comes to their needs — ‘Okay, well this is a business’ — but when it comes to our needs, it's for the love of the art.”
Two dancers, who asked that their names be withheld, tell Teen Vogue how they struggle to get by. One dancer, who says they don’t come from a wealthy family and have no one to subsidize their cost of living, mentions feeling “thankful” to work overtime. “It doesn't matter how many hours I go without a break. I need that money.” The other dancer says that despite diligently trying to save, if they were asked to pay rent today, they couldn’t: “It's ridiculous that I'm a quarter of the way into my career, and I can't save money no matter how hard I try.” (The average age of retirement from a professional dance career is between 35-40, according to some estimates. Retirement contributions are also something the union is fighting for: It’s currently at only 4% as a result of previous negotiations, significantly lower than peer ballet companies, according to AGMA.)
Scheduling is also something the artists hope to change. Dancers have class — which is essential but unpaid — at 10:15 a.m., with rehearsals that stretch until 7:00 p.m. during rehearsal weeks (varying during performance weeks as not all dancers are called to every rehearsal). Many dancers, Basmagy explains, have a 45 minute to one hour commute, so by the time they’ve showered and had dinner, it’s often 10:30 p.m. And multiple sources who speak with Teen Vogue mention the outside gym visits, coaching, or other conditioning programs that are necessary to perform at the highest possible level, programs dancers often pay for out of pocket.
Emeline Shepard, an assistant stage manager who graduated college last spring, tells Teen Vogue that valuing artists financially has the potential to change the sustainability of this career. A survey from ArtTable, as reported on by Hyperallergic, found that poor compensation and costs tied to employment, among other factors, exacerbated inequities across the arts and culture industry in the United States.
“When you're not treated as a valued employee, it just kind of gets rid of that passion and joy that got you into the profession in the first place,” says Katie Williams, a soloist. Williams was always going "above and beyond," she says, pursuing outside coaching and "doing whatever I could to sustain myself in the art form." All of that was paid for out of pocket, she adds.
Over the course of her more than 15 years with the company, Williams says she has constantly heard the phrase "This is the way we've always done it." She notes that change has to be systemic — and a change in priorities. "I think that saying is really tired, and it just doesn't work," she says. "It's time for a new way of thinking, and we need to be a part of that."
Williams also points out that the company has a 36-week contract rather than the standard 40 weeks, meaning there are fewer weeks they are paid by the company.
Then it’s a struggle to go on unemployment in New York State, Williams says, and dancers who are ineligible due to immigration status don’t even have that option. (Dancers receive Supplement Employment Benefits of $300 a week during layoff weeks via their union contract, according to AGMA.) “A lot of people go into debt over the summer, regardless of how much they've saved while working, just because it is actually impossible to save up enough and be able to support yourself off of that small amount,” Williams explains.
Becoming a union rep and seeing the business side was valuable, Williams says, noting that the company has operated without a CEO since Janet Rollé resigned in June after 17 months. But without dancers and stage managers, the company can’t put on a show. “Something that keeps coming up is the idea of dignity,” Williams says. “Having dignity in yourself in saying, ‘I worked my whole life for this, since I was three years old, and I deserve to be able to support myself financially in order to continue to do what I love.’”
Ahead of a sold-out tour to the Kennedy Center and the potential strike, dancers and stage managers are thinking about what workplace solidarity will mean for the people who come after them. Annie Hollister, counsel at AGMA, tells Teen Vogue that the negotiating committee has “engagement from the most junior artists to international stars, and to see all of those people look around and understand that they can't succeed unless everyone succeeds, it's just incredible to witness.”
Says Woods, “We do want ABT to be industry leaders across the spectrum in the health and safety and welfare of the artists and artistically, in the work that we're doing.” They’ve seen this reckoning happen across the arts, including in the theater industry.
Recently, dancers with Dance Theatre of Harlem signed cards to form a union and join AGMA, and reporting from Dance Magazine has explored a potential “union boom” in the dance world. Author Chloe Angyal, in Turning Pointe: How a New Generation of Dancers Is Saving Ballet From Itself, examines the need for dancers to have unions and the systemic problems that unions in the ballet world have not yet been able to solve. Angyal’s book notes that “unions also offer protections for early-career dancers, who are cheaper to hire and put onstage more than senior ones.”
Dancers themselves are considering how current efforts to achieve more equitable, sustainable workplaces could impact future generations. Says Basmagy, “This new wave of younger dancers and stage managers coming in, it's that group that's like, ‘No, I deserve to be doing this, I’m worth doing this, and I should be getting these things back from the company I work for.' You just want it to be better for the people after.”
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