Probing Precarity

Coloured Swan: Moya Michael's Prowess in the Face of Fetishization in European Dance

“…My longitudinal study 12 concluded that contemporary dance artists in Europe maneuver in a largely symbolic economy, which incites gatekeepers to make their selections based on the identity of a maker rather than on the qualities of the artwork itself (Van Assche 2020, 141). Artists do not always have control over how they are perceived, presented, and promoted: sometimes gatekeepers create certain expectations, determined by artists’ inherited as well as accumulated cultural, social, and symbolic capital, about the sort of work that they should (not) make.…”

“…12.In the longitudinal fieldwork, I followed a sample of fourteen contemporary dance artists with different demographic backgrounds and in different career and life stages to explore the impact of the working conditions in the institutionalized context of Brussels and Berlin on their dance performances (see Van Assche 2020). …”

“…Even my own survey on the working conditions in the Brussels dance scene in 2015 did not specifically probe dancers’ descent. While it did query country of birth, citizenship, and residency as separate items, it regrettably lacks data on how many dance artists of African descent actually reside in Belgium (see Van Assche 2020, 51–58).…”

“…My own ongoing empirical research focuses on the relation between labor and contemporary dance and examines the impact of the labor conditions, particularly in the project-based work environment, on dance performances presented in Europe (see esp. Van Assche 2020). For this article, I am first returning to the qualitative data from Brussels to contextualize the work environment under discussion, which played an important role in the genesis of Michael's Coloured Swans Series and is under inquiry in Khoiswan .…”