Psychological Profiling of Dancers in Transition

Andrew Evans, Director of Arts Psychology Consultants, London © 1995

Paper presented at the IOTPD Lausanne Symposium on the Transition of Dancers, 1955

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 Introduction

I am a psychologist who specialises in the Arts. In 1988 I set up a group practice in London - Arts Psychology Consultants - to specialise in performing and creative artists, and since start-up I have seen around 650 clients for counselling and careers advice. My associates are psychologists who like myself have worked professionally in one or other art form. We all do ongoing work with artists, write books and articles and are heavily involved with bodies that promote the health of artists, such as the British Performing Arts Medicine Trust (BPAMT) and the International Society for the Study of Tensions in Performance (ISSTIP).

My own background is in music, and I worked professionally for 20 years as a musician on double bass and piano, together with some work in film, writing and journalism. I work as a Counselling Psychologist, and yet my work is so closely related to the actual professional problems of artists such as creative blocks and stage fright that I could equally call myself a Performance Psychologist - tyhe equivalent of a Sport Psychologist in the Arts. I see this marriage of private life and work as absolutely essential - artists are artists 24 hours a day. Any emotional problem has a direct effect on their work, and problems at work have a direct effect on personal life, emotional mood and relationships with others.

Having been a professional artist is an advantage in many ways for the psychologist - a broad knowledge of touring and performing on stage gives a strong ‘feel’ for the lifestyle of a fellow performer, and particular technical knowledge of the arts not only means increased familiarity with the problems of clients but an inherent ‘permission’ to go straight ahead and talk about the profession itself, rather than diverting tension into personal issues, relationships etc.

Most of my work with artists has been with musicians, with whom I am most familiar, including all the main London classical orchestras, and our statistics in Britain show that all organisations who are involved in the health of artists see more musicians than any other performers, followed by actors. Dancers form a very small part of people presenting for help. Some inferences are that:

I regret not working more with dancers for many reasons - not only are they fellow performers with a similar love of music and performing, not only are they talented, bright and interesting to work with, but also I myself have gone through the transition from performer to a second career, and can empathise with many of the hard-to-define feelings inherent in the process.

Despite my wide specialisation in longer term counselling for artists, my actual present work with dancers is in fact very specialised: I administer a structured Personality and Careers Profile in conjunction with the Dance Resettlement Trust of Great Britain - which has internal counselling resources - and give this to the dancer as part of their transition programme. I am typically called in around the transition point, though dancers are increasingly requesting such a profile some years before the actual moment of transition.

There is no reason why such a profile should not be valuable to the dancer at any point in their dancing career. Knowing personality traits helps the dancer to be aware of personal qualities such as introversion, depth of feeling, creativity, leadership. This alone gives the dancer an automatic ‘identity’ which is no less definite or valuable than that of any other human being, so it may also raise self-knowledge and self-esteem. It may also be asked whether the ‘self doubt’ of the dancer - given the single minded training and frequent lack of wider study areas - is partly self-ignorance.

Certain traits, when known, form the platform for life decisions. Knowing one has a particularly high leadership profile may direct a particular dancer into a leadership position. A high creativity profile may help make a difficult decision between a career option in a Social profession and one in the Media. The social option may regretfully be passed over, or if it is taken it will be on the basis of including creative activity such as starting one’s own practice or writing books.

Whilst such self-knowledge can be constructively useful to the dancer well before transition, there are other factors which tend to delay the process of careers choice. While dancing, the dancer may be so much in the throes of the ‘passion’ for dancing that little else seems relevant on an emotional level. The direction within companies may also regard this single-minded concentration as a good thing, possibly because it delays the doubt and self-searching of transition and keeps the dancer focused. The Resettlement organisations in dance may want their funding of the dancer to be optimised as one large and effective retraining, typically to University Degree level.

A number of individual dancers are, however, moving forward the process of retraining by deliberately taking courses outside their dance hours which they fund themselves, such as training to be an aeroplane pilot. In fact, certain part-time courses requiring a number of hours experience over a longer period are particularly suited to this approach.

So my present role in the dancer’s transition is as a sort of ‘heavy weapon’ in the decision-making process. The tests used are the industry-standard ones - Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (TM), Cattell 16PF (C), and the Holland Self-Directed Search - that would be found in the repertoire of any high quality careers analyst. After an initial meeting to outline the aims and goals of the transition and some preliminary career ideas, the dancer fills in these questionnaires. The results are compiled into a 16 page report which is given to the dancer. Not only does this give a comprehensive personality profile, it also gives career recommendations: best-fit functions such as ‘team-worker’, essential values such as ‘communication’ and ‘challenge’, type of career preferences such as ‘entrepreneurial work’, and two separate and complementary lists of suitable occupations - one based on personality and the other on occupational preference.

This profile is so comprehensive that it will turn even a total inability to choose into an acceptable short-list, and when a final choice has to be made to obtain funding, the dancer is thus relieved of a good part of the agony of choice-making. Besides this, the logical progression from Personality to Motivation to Career, once explained to the dancer, gives a whole new illumination on the reasons why we do certain things with our lives rather than others, and what coherent reasons there are for finding more pleasure and reward in one activity rather than in another.

1. Personality

The fundamental point of departure for any profile is personality. To measure this I use the Myers Briggs Type Indicator, a very popular, simple and effective personality test. It has four dimensions:

Extravert - Introvert

Extraverts are naturally more able to deal with people, particularly in sales, research and media capacities. Introverts are better at detail work and working alone or behind the scenes, such as in computing or academic tasks.

Sensing - Intuitive

Sensing people are practical and realistic, and therefore good at sport and physical activities as well as practical business and administrative tasks. Intuitive people are imaginative and abstract, and suited to creative and media work as well as many of the ‘meaning of life’ areas such as psychology and the spiritual and helping professions.

Thinking - Feeling

Thinking people are logical and reasoning and good at law, managerial positions and science and technology. Feeling people are more concerned with happiness and harmony on the one hand, suggesting the helping professions, and with non-verbal right-brain creativity on the other hand, suggesting art, music and the media.

Judging - Perceptive

Judging people are good at planning, and thrive in managerial and administrative tasks. Perceptive people are flexible and enjoy living for the moment. They need variety and new projects they can get their teeth into, such as in journalism or the media.

The statistics for the 35 dancers seen so far are:

Extraverts:   19 (54%)

Introverts:   16 (46%)

Sensing:   11 (31%)

Intuitive:   24 (69%)

Thinking:   12 (34%)

Feeling            :   23 (66%)

Judging:   23 (66%)

Perceiving:   12 (34%)

This shows that in this particular sample, dancers are almost evenly divided between Extravert and Introvert. One third are imaginative (Intuitive), the other third practical and realistic (Sensing). Two thirds are Feeling, the other third are Thinking. Two thirds are structured and planning (Judging), while one third are flexible and open (Perceiving).

I then use the Cattell 16 Personality Questionnaire to measure more detailed personality traits, as shown below. The large graph shows the basic 16 traits, the smaller one some further general traits. In all cases the scores show the tendency to one pole or the other, around an average score of 5.5.

 

 

 

 

 

           

One thing evident from this 16PF profile is that the scores are fairly central, rather than extreme, and this ‘balance’ does seem a factor we see not only in the physical poise of dancers but also in their mental equilibrium. Another indicator for this ‘balance’ is the anxiety index, which is not only appreciably below other artists such as painters and musicians, but even slightly below average.

 

 

This may surprise dancers, who may internally feel insecurity and low self-esteem and externally believe some of the mythology that they are poor communicators and unqualified for anything but dance. But other data in other countries such as Canada confirms this very closely. Dancers themselves are not neurotic. They do a difficult job with passion and commitment, and maintain professional standards arguably higher than in any other art form. At transition, confusion may arise between the inherent stability of the dancer and the enormous instability of the life-transition, with its attendant confusions, depressions and anger, that they are required to experience. In this respect it is the process that creates anxiety, not the dancer.

The Intelligence curve of the dancer show a peak at a point equivalent to the top 15 percent of the population:

 

 

This sample of dancers is clearly intelligent, and of well above average personal potential. Why should this be a surprise to some dancers who still dwell in low self-esteem? It seems that something in the feedback between dancers, their peers, their teachers and the general public is creating a mythology which simply does not stand up to analysis. We have, on the contrary, to explain our findings of high potential by the fact that this sample is already highly selected - it contains those dancers who ‘made it’ into the profession. However, it is these dancers that make up our major dance companies, so these are effectively ‘our dancers’. Within the sample were also a number of independents, and the independents were no less intelligent, though again had made it in a different part of the dance world.

The Creativity profile of dancers is particularly interesting:

  

 

Unlike the smooth ‘normal’ curve for the General Population and the raised curve for general arts subjects, it has twin peaks. There is a lower creativity peak representing about one third of the sample and a higher creativity peak representing the other two thirds. This suggestion that there are two groups of dancers - practical ones and imaginative ones - is exactly mirrored in the Myers Briggs profile, which shows that one third are realistic and practical and two thirds imaginative. It may be hypothesised that these are the dancers who identify with the physicality of dance and who, like sports people, live in the moment and get a certain intensity out of the heightened experiences of real life - challenge, movement, fun, material rewards. This realism is a very positive indicator of success after transition, particularly if self-employed.

It is however, fairly untypical of the arts as a whole, which is a much more abstract dimension in which ‘virtual reality’, fantasy and the world of ‘what could be’ rather than ‘what is’ holds more allure. This abstract world contains more metaphor, more symbolism, more duality, irony and ambiguity. Whether or not the dancer is called on to portray such symbolic duality and conflict, it is an inherent dimension of choreography and frequently of the classical repertoire of ballet music. The trade-off for such abstractions can, however, be a lack of practical realism which may have to be taken into account in planning second careers.

 

2. Motivation

The second thing I try to establish is how a person’s personality works in a dynamic way, i.e. how that personality is motivated. Practical dancers, on the one hand, may want to continue with something physical e.g. in sport and leisure or physiotherapy, or material e.g. in business and administration. Creatives, on the other hand, will want to express their creativity in choreography, directing their own dance groups, or outside dance in the arts and media or in creative tasks within other disciplines like running one’s own company.

To further explore motivation I use Belbin Team Roles, which gives eight different scales corresponding to typical organisational functions of people (max=10, average =5.5):

Creative                      7.45

Researcher                  6.26

Shaper                         6.23

Monitor                       4.75

Completer                   6.10

Chair                           5.75

Team Worker              4.76

Company Worker        3.89

This information is added to all the previous personality data. The next stage to be added is a measure of career characteristics and goals, or ‘job values’. This questionnaire asks subjects to indicate their most and least important values. The results are shown below:

5 Most important values: Challenge, Communication, Artistic work, Creativity, Variety                                       

5 Least important values: A predictable routine, Community work, Working for a well-known organization, Persuading people, Working alone

As with Belbin’s team roles and the other data here, these values are largely in accordance with other arts subjects. It is ironic that ‘A predictable routine’ and ‘Working for a well-known organisation’ are both, in fact, typical of dancer’s working life, so there may be a distinct atmosphere of ‘grin and bear it’ in the major companies about some aspects of the dancer’s life. These values are absolutely typical of artists, with a predictable routine being anathema to most.

All this is then combined with information that the dancer directly discusses, such as what activities have been well liked in the past and which seem attractive for the future. The result is a very comprehensive picture of motivation.

3. Careers.

The third and final part of the picture is a short-list of suitable careers. This is already provided from:

By using all these means - and sometimes extra tests of creativity or particular skills - it is possible to build up a quite distinct and homogeneous picture of where the dancer will be happiest working. This information is then passed on to the Dance Resettlement Trust who sort out the practical matters such as what training is required, what extra equipment is necessary and how the dancer will go about retraining and starting a new career. By being so comprehensively thorough we have managed to establish a good record of successful choices. At the end of the decision-making process, the dancer should be fairly clear and happy about choices, and also understand clearly all the steps in the process and exactly how such choices have been arrived at.

The predicted outcomes of my sample of 35 agree quite well with the actual outcomes of the overall numbers of dancers dealt with by the Fund, of whom not all have such a structured Careers Analysis.

Occupational Preferences (Self Directed Search):           

Occupations                           My data %     Trust 1991 % Trust 1995 % Trend

Realistic          (trade skills)    0                      0                      0                      Constant         

Investigative    (technology)    6.6                   4.55                 18.5                 Up

Arts                 (arts+media)    32.4                 60.34               30.5                 Down

Social              (helping)          30.5                 15.3                 22.2                 Up

Enterprising     (business)        21                    10.33               29                    Up

Conventional   (admin.)           9.5                   9.5                   0                      Down

The final part of my involvement in Transition is the summing-up and follow-up procedure. I conclude by affirming to the dancer all the positive traits revealed in the construction of their profile. I then support this by offering, where necessary, to write an individual reference for the dancer where needed, typically to a University or College where the number of state qualifications taken by the dancer may be less than that of the typical student. Such a reference will aim to dispel any mythology concerning dancers and underscore their considerable positive personal qualities:

All this amounts to a potential to do very well. Studies of the academic progress of dancers have revealed several to be high achievers in the top flight of their courses, and a number of later careers reveal similar determination and personal effectiveness. Where the psychological problems of Transition have been sympathetically and positively dealt with, including support, warmth and encouragement from friends, partners and those assisting transition, the considerable talents of the dancer may be liberated to work - if not with the same passion as dance can gave - with a new set of goals and hopefully a new and different passion which may result in rewards other than the ecstasy of the dance, the feeling one is special and the constant feedback of applause.

Conclusions:  

The data revealed in dealing with these dancers in Transition shows them to be:

Acknowledgements:

TM MBTI and Myers-Briggs Type Indicator are Trade Marks of Counsulting Psychologists Press Inc.

16 PF is Copyright (C) 1967 by The Institute of Personality and Ability Testing Inc. All property rights reserved by the Institute for Personality and Ability Testing Inc. PO Box 188, Champaign, Illinois. 61820 USA. Printed and distributed by The NFER-NELSON Publishing Company Ltd., Darville House, 2 Oxford Road East, Windsor, Berkshire, United Kingdom. SL4 1DF

The Self Directed Search is published by PAR (Psychological Assessment Resources Inc.), PO Box 98 / Odessa, Florida 33556

References:

  ‘The Secrets of Musical Confidence’, Andrew Evans, Pub. HarperCollins (Thorsons), London, 1994. NB! Available from Arts Psychology Consultants at £8 including post and packaging.

Data (C) 1996 Andrew Evans, Arts Psychology Consultants