Free, ongoing training and community space built specifically for emerging and mid-career professional dancers. No tuition. No audition. No cost.
Get involvedWhat it is
CMPNY CLASS is not a studio. It is not a school. It is the space that comes after both, and holds the door open while a career fully takes hold.
The path to becoming a professional dancer demands an extraordinary investment. By many estimates, dancers reach their mid-twenties having spent $100,000 or more preparing for a career that pays a median of $27,000 a year. Yet the performing arts offers no structured support for the years between training and stable opportunity.
The gap between preparation and opportunity is where careers go quiet — not for lack of talent, but for lack of support.
The industry built a path to professional dance — but no bridge across the hardest years. Dancers are expected to keep training, keep auditioning, and keep investing with no institutional safety net.
Dancers with real credits, real experience, and real skill often find themselves between projects with nowhere to turn. The industry has no infrastructure for that moment either.
When we treat this as a personal problem, we lose dancers to survival jobs and burnout. When we treat it as infrastructure, we keep talent in the field long enough for it to be seen, hired, and sustained.
A free, consistent, professional space that holds the door open until opportunity walks through it. This is what workforce development looks like in the performing arts.
A note from the founder
For a long time, I lived with one foot on the stage and the other in the studio. Performing and teaching simultaneously gave me a vantage point I would not trade, but it also gave me an uncomfortably clear view of the gap between what dancers invest in their careers and what they get in return.
The gap that stayed with me most was not just financial, though it is that too. It was the unmeasurable time between contracts — that stretch when you are not working, not earning, and yet still expected to take class, maintain your body, stay performance-ready, and keep showing up as a professional. You are paying to be available for a job you do not yet have.
"In the corporate world, if you are being asked to pay to get a job, that is a scam. In dance, we just call it the industry."
I wanted to create a space that acknowledged that reality and did something about it. CMPNY CLASS is that leap. A space to train, build community, and pursue opportunity — together, and free of charge.
If you are an emerging or mid-career professional dancer, CMPNY CLASS is for you. Show up, train, and become part of a community that is actively invested in your next move. No cost, no catch.
CMPNY CLASS maintains a pool of trained, career-ready performers who are actively available. If you have a production, a project, or an opportunity, bring it here.
Guest teaching, masterclasses, career conversations, industry panels. If you have knowledge that would serve a room full of emerging professionals, we want to hear from you.
Keeping CMPNY CLASS free is an active choice that requires resources. Supporting this work means directly subsidizing a workforce that has already proven its commitment.
Know an emerging dancer grinding through the gap? Send them here. Know a funder who cares about creative workforce development? Make the introduction.
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