Divided into four sections, each with 13 defined categories and an open-ended “other,” the Baltimore Regional Dance Survey sought to understand the kinds of services demanded by respondents in the region. Services specified in the question were:
Performance recording
Performance broadcast
Co-working and meeting space
Costume services
Marketing services/assistance
Health and wellness
Accounting/Business services
Non-dance classes (e.g., Marketing, Audio production)
Physical therapy
Music creation and editing
Job placement/Career information
Financial assistance
Housing information/Referrals
For each dimension of a respondent’s dance career (Student, Instructor, Performer) respondents were asked to indicate which of these services they “are likely to use to advance your dance career.” 66 different respondents engaged this question in at least one dimension of their dance career. The response summary across all career dimensions looks like this:
Music creation and editing sticks out just a bit above performance recording as the most in-demand services among these respondents, but there’s a lot of things these respondents would (or could) use. Next, let’s break this down by the three career dimensions – 47 respondents addressed this question as students, 51 as instructors, and 54 as performers. That looks like this:
This exposes some interesting differences. Performers are noticeably more interested in Costuming, Health and Wellness, Physical Therapy, Financial Assistance, and Housing than student or instructor respondents. Instructors are more interested in Marketing. Somewhat surprisingly, students are most interested in Accounting/Business services. A particular standout in this view, Performers are more than two and a half times as likely to engage Health services.
Both of these views hide an overlap, where an individual respondent is interested in the same service for multiple aspects of their career (e.g., Music Creation and Editing as both a performer and an instructor). To expose that aspect, this view includes all responses in all dimensions for all services (and the scale is roughly double):
In this view, we see that Recording services are now the most in-demand (due to a significant overlap between Performer and Instructor responses). In the first chart, demand for Marketing, Costume, Accounting, Health and Education were nearly identical (40 or 41 respondents each). Now, with the extra dimensions exposed, the potential demand for Costume (71), Accounting (70), and Education (69) remain similar, but they all exceed the potential demand for Marketing (66) and, in particular, Health (55).
Before we leave this subject, what did the 13 categories miss? A total of 11 respondents picked “Other” for some dimension of their dance career. Descriptions of “Other” provided by instructor-track respondents included “Observing other teaching styles,” “Word of mouth,” “Fitness,” and “Professional development in pedagogy.” Descriptions of “Other” provided by performer-track respondents included “Mathematical dance analysis,” “Finding professional dance training,” “Workshops with other teachers,” “Grant writing assistance,” and “Open studio space.” Some of these could be shoe-horned into the existing categories, but it’s great to have the information as specific needs. I honestly don’t know what “Mathematical dance analysis” means in this context, so if that particular respondent would like to reach out in some form, it’s a really intriguing phrase, and I’d love to discuss it.