American dancers not tied to a single

[bart]

I don't want to extend speculation or encourage building castles in the air about the unknown in the Ansanelli case. But I do have a couple of general questions about American dancers who -- for whatever reason -- have found themselves both in demand and unconnected to an institution:

What kind of opportunities exist for such dancers in European companies, and can you give me any examples of Americans who have taken this road?

Does the current structure of international ballet make it possible for a principal dancer (at a relatively early stage of his or her career) to operate primarily as a free-lancer, moving from company to company on a short-term-contract basis, and can you give me any examples?

[Admin note: This post was originally in the Ansanelli thread in the NYCB forum, but it warrants its own topic.]

[Paquita]

Maybe not the best example, but one name that popped into my head was Rasta Thomas.

[Old Fashioned]

A few dancers with the Houston Ballet, most prominently a principal and a soloist, followed Ben Stevenson to Texas Ballet Theatre after Stanton Welch became the new AD for HB. This occurred a year after Welch had taken over.

[lisinka1]

After spending my teens dancing with a small local company on Long Island I can tell you about dancers on the smaller stages not being connect to a company. I was in a relationship with one of this company's principal dancers. He had trained internationally and according to him he was very well known in his country. He moved to the US to dance with a major US company. For whatever reason, things did not work out. He ended spending the rest of his career going from engagement to engagement with small companies in the US, Europe, and Asia. He did this to survive both artistically and financially. Many of these small companies do not pay a lot and living near a major city like New York is expensive.

Many dancers need to dance just to survive artistically but cannot because there are not enough jobs with large companies out there. So they are driven to go from small company to small company to dance and to pay the bills.

He was not the only one in this company doing this. Just about every principal in this company was because this company only offered employment during Nutcracker season. Like I said before, The Nutcracker is not enough to survive on artistically and financially for a whole year.