UCLA Entertainment Law Review

Freelance dancers do not receive adequate workplace protections. This problem is largely attributable to two interrelated causes: the dancers’ inability to unionize as well as a choreographer’s inability to access sufficient funding. The inability to join existing performing arts unions leaves the freelance dancer with limited power to secure better protections. A shortage of sufficient funding opportunities available to choreographers inhibits a choreographer’s ability to improve conditions for his or her dancers. These unionization and funding problems must be remedied concurrently to establish adequate workplace conditions in the freelance dance industry.

A current bill in Congress, the Richard L. Trumka Protecting the Right to Organize Act (PRO Act), may provide freelance dancers with the ability to unionize by amending the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) so that freelance dancers are captured within the NLRA’s definition of “employee.” The dancers’ newfound ability to unionize would alone be an insufficient and detrimental remedy to the problem, however, without simultaneously addressing the scarce avenues of available dance funding. The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) provides a basis for increasing funding opportunities. The NEA once gave independent grants to choreographers through choreographers’ fellowship sand allowed for more widespread use of subgranting NEA funds. In response to controversial and obscene photographic works in the late 1980s, however, Congress eliminated choreographers’ fellowships and greatly restricted subgranting. This Comment argues that Congress must reinstate choreographers’ fellowships and expand eligibility for subgrants so that choreographers can gain access to the funding necessary to respond to their dancer’s needs and to create better working conditions in the freelance dance industry.