Belly Dancing and the Paycheck

In today’s day and age it’s hard to think about making a living with belly dance outside of teaching classes, gigs, sewing or promoting. Most dancers who have studios are juggling marketing and self promotion under one breath.

The hardest thing for me to do has been to promote myself with a straight face without feeling like I’m a charlatan. Daniel has watched me promote shows easily with proficiency and watch me struggle and deny myself the same endorsement or ability.  When I danced at a local restaurant here in town I could maneuver my selling ability around the hustle and bustle of waiters and waitresses which meant working in a way that I felt wasn’t pushing myself on people. I had to learn that if I didn’t sell myself, nobody at that restaurant was going to do it for me.

I remember one year a dancer here in town had a festival and she thought the restaurant that I danced at would be a good venue for a cocktail hour dinner show.  It was an unfortunate and erroneous idea from the get go and I remember the throngs of dancers packed into a small space like sardines.  The mayhem was just the beginning because as the evening wore on the dancers who used the bathroom kept those needing to use it languishing in line for minutes on end. Food orders were screwed up not because of the incompetency of the wait staff but because a majority of the women when ordering kept changing their minds or mixing up orders. I was there through out the confusion because I helped the restaurant and my dance friend that evening by keeping glasses filled and tempers pacified.

Weeks after the event my friend complained about the evening stating that she didn’t make any money and I told her straight off that it was too small a venue and she should have known better. But sometimes deaf ears become a precious commodity when defending ones own opinion. She couldn’t see past her own reasoning which sometimes in women tends to be more of an emotional crutch.

A good example of one of my faux pas was last June in a workshop I did in Sedona, AZ.  I didn’t send the venue hostess my usual business contract requests and I ended up being in the red on that one. The fact that there wasn’t enough advertizing done pretty much guaranteed well intended efforts to be exhausted.  The hostess was inexperienced and I suspected this but I kept silent because I was really looking forward to the trip and I was crossing my fingers hoping she would come through. It was my own fault but a costly one. That is not a good business approach to have and I knew better. I was the contactee on this one instead of Daniel and after that experience he said in a very polite way that from now on he was taking over negotiations period. I had to agree with him because it doesn’t make sense to lose money and make money for someone else especially in a business that is your livelihood. You all might have déjà vu on this one but I put it in again to remind myself that no matter how many years you can have in this business its’ so easy to let business ethics slide.

A while back a dance acquaintance explained how she does so many workshops. She said that if she sees a workshop happening in an area that she likes, she will call the event coordinator and offer to teach a workshop at the event. She will fly herself there and work out a deal so that the following year she is invited back with her expenses paid and she then offers to bring them to her hometown. I guess this is the old fashioned way of doing business because in today’s economy this just doesn’t work anymore. But it seemed to answer the questions nagging at the back of my mind regarding why so many of the same dancers were teaching at workshops continuously. She said many dancers in her time did it and I think that is how they monopolized the workshop circuit for so many years.

Making a living with belly dancing is different today and I think many women are finding out that putting up a website isn’t enough anymore. Daniel did a beautiful website for a dancer in New York that was really the cat’s meow. I was slightly jealous but I was so impressed with the website that I was tickled it was his baby. Unfortunately she let so much of her information like scheduling, events, photos slide to the point it was obvious she was neglecting it. It’s no longer up and the unfortunate thing is that this dancer who is very passionate about her dancing had no clue what her website was for. I didn’t know up until I met Daniel so I thank God  he showed me the ropes and purpose of my website which was to help me make money. It’s not easy but keeping up on your weekly and monthly schedules means that you are in the game and ready to play.

I just saw a friend’s website that looked like it had been put together by a 5 year old. It didn’t start out that way but part of her problem is that she has someone impersonating a moderator come in to post stuff who doesn’t have a clue on how to keep the lines in place or keep the integrity of the website intact. From what it used to be to what it is now, it’s a shame. So obviously the reason I am bringing the issues of websites up is because they have to be maintained by someone who knows what they are doing and that also means we have to care about how we are presented to potential customers. With so many dancers out and about the competition is different now and there are many dancers out there that do care and take every aspect of their career seriously.

If belly dance is part of your paycheck isn’t it smart to invest most of your time to figuring out how you can make more money? It’s not hard and in today’s economy what you have to do is be diligent in the areas of your dancing that matter the most to you. It comes down to if you want to dance more, focus on that or if you want teach at workshops, focus on that. I think that as women we tend to want it all and we can’t focus on it all because it’s not in our nature to spread ourselves so thin. Remember insanity is always lurking around corners to snatch our brains!

And lets’ not forget the shams out there who take advantage of unsuspecting dancers. The belly dance break a leg award goes to “Learn how to be a professional belly dancer in less than a month.” We received another email from this notorious dancer and yet again she stated that because she is who she is, she is the only dancer who can teach students this way. (No I am not putting words in her mouth, she said this) So I guess the belly dance greats just can’t hold a candle next to this dancers abilities but I think it’s more they wouldn’t want to. I think this is the perfect example of the inflated ego fleecing the public.

In the end I think if we understand that life is a dance from one stage to the next then we know the best way to leave the stage is not only with a thunderous applause but with some money in our pockets, the honest way.