Being a dancer is not a cheap pursuit. There’s classes, workshops, traveling to festivals, attending shows, and of course, costuming and makeup. I don’t want to think about how much money I’ve spent on dance since I started, but most of it was money well-spent (I say most, because of course I made some regrettable costume purchases when I was a baby dancer, we all do!).
Throughout it all, the money that I’ve spent has been my own. Aside from my sweet mother-in-law sponsoring me for a few workshops, my dance expenses have either come out of our regular household income, my jewelry business, selling off old costuming, and of course, birthday money since my birthday conveniently falls right before Tribal Fest.
I’ve seen some dancers turn to crowdfunding sites for their dance goals, and there’s nothing wrong with that, but it’s not for me. That’s not to say that I’ll never have a Kickstarter or GoFundMe campaign, but if I do it will likely be for something BIG, like filming a DVD or putting on a huge show or opening a dance studio (none of which I have planned for the near future).
Anyway, since I closed my jewelry business earlier this year, I’m currently working on killing two birds with one stone: destashing some of my excess beads, and using the money to pay for my upcoming trips to the Las Vegas Belly Dance Intensive and Waking Persephone. You can check out my Etsy Shop to see what I currently have available, and there’s more coming all the time. Some of it would make cool tribal jewelry, and I know a lot of my fellow dancers enjoy making their own jewelry and embellishing their own costumes, so maybe you’ll find something you could use. I was in the jewelry-making business for 15.5 years, so I amassed a lot of beads in that time! Of course, I’m keeping most of them, because I still love to make jewelry, but there’s a lot of things that I have more of than I need, or that I only bought with the idea of making something to sell. They need to go so I can consolidate my collection!
At some point I’ll probably make another go at selling my remaining jewelry stock, too, but for now I am really enjoying sending my beautiful beads off to new homes, where hopefully someone will transform them into lovely art.
I have to say, when I see a dancer (who is known to be in full-time employment, in a first-world country) running one of these crowd-funding things to further her training, that does make me uncomfortable. Dance is an expensive hobby and we are all feeling the pinch but that doesn’t sit well with me. Funding a video project, or an outreach programme is totally different!
ReplyYeah, I try not to get too judgey about it, but I really feel like fundraisers should either be for a big project, or for an emergency. I feel like the Kickstarter mentality is taking over our culture. Instead of looking at all of the successful campaigns and saying “Oh cool, these neat people got money to get a major project off the ground, good for them” a lot of people seem to think “I can use this to get people to give me money, awesome!”
But then I wonder if I’m just speaking from a place of privilege because I’m fortunate to have enough money that I don’t have to use crowdfunding to pay for gas to drive to Tribal Fest or whatever. Would I have felt differently if Kickstarter had been around when I was young and broke?
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