Dance Counts: A report on the living and working conditions of dance artists on the island of Ireland

This report brings together key findings from two major all-island research projects seeking to understand the working conditions and experiences of dance practitioners on the island of Ireland: the Dance Counts survey and the Dance Conversations study.

The Dance Counts survey sought to capture data regarding the living and working conditions of those working in, with and for dance. Led by Dance Ireland, the survey was developed in collaboration with Dr Peter Campbell (University of Liverpool) with the support of Dr Victoria Durrer (University College Dublin, UCD) and in consultation with Dr Aoife McGrath (Queen's University Belfast, QUB).

Led by Dr Aoife McGrath (Queen’s University Belfast) and Dr Victoria Durrer (UCD) in collaboration with Dance Ireland and Theatre and Dance NI, Dance Conversations was a mixed methods dance, film and discussion-based research project undertaken with six dance artists from both sides of the border. Dance Conversations addressed a need, articulated by professional dance artists at the Co-Motion Dance Conference in October 2019 and in the March 2021 industry-led Dance Think Tanks Report (McGrath), for collaborative development of North/South creative exchanges and better understanding of the shared living and working conditions of dance artists across the island of Ireland. Taking place in 2021, the project was supported by the Department for Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media under the Cooperation with Northern Ireland Funding Scheme. Alongside initial findings of the Dance Counts survey, these Dance Conversations were presented and shared to a public audience through a documentary film, co-directed by Mary Wycherley and Aoife McGrath and with an original score by Jürgen Simpson, at an online event on 5th November 2021.

By bringing these two studies together, this report places an embodied experience of work in dance into dialogue with more traditional methods of sociological enquiry. Findings from both studies are publicly available in the Dance Counts online archive and are further disseminated through a series of academic papers and both academic and sector-facing conferences and gatherings. More information regarding access to this work is available in the online archive.