Make the movement other people perform. Almost everyone in this job danced first.
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Pay, the path, pros and cons and the facts on one printable page. Counsellors: send it to a student from your own email in one click.
The median pay is about $85,000 a year. Across everyone in the job it runs from about $46,000 at the lower end to about $146,000 at the upper end. The source is listed under Sources at the end of this page.
4 to 10 years after high school, on the usual route.
$2,000 to $50,000 all in for tuition, fees, exams and kit. Living costs are not counted.
No. There is no licence to hold, though many employers still ask for training or a certificate.
Moderate demand nationally, from government outlook data. Demand varies by region, so check your area.
Or read the whole thing here
What you earn and what it costs to get there.
Median
$85,000
Lower end
$46,000
Upper end
$146,000
Job Bank's national median is $41.03 an hour, about $85,000 a year at 40 hours a week. The lower and upper ends are Job Bank's low and high wages for everyone in the group, $22 and $70 an hour. Very few choreographers bill full-time hours. Work comes as projects with a creation fee, so what you earn in a year depends on how many weeks of work you get.
A creation fee, then royalties
A fee to make the work, plus a payment each time it is performed
Under the live performance agreements negotiated by the Canadian Actors' Equity Association, which represents theatre, opera and dance, a choreographer is normally paid to create the work and then paid again for performances. A piece that stays in a company's repertoire keeps earning.
$41.99 an hour
The median in British Columbia, the highest in Canada
Quebec ($40.00) and Ontario ($39.90) are close behind, and Saskatchewan is lowest at $26.85. Commercial work, such as television, music videos, tours and large musicals, is usually paid by the day.
Roughly, all in
$2,000 to $50,000
Tuition, fees, exams and kit. Not rent, food or travel
There is no licence and no required school, so the low end is continuing class fees and a few hours of studio rental at $15 to $40 an hour to make your first work. The high end is a university or conservatory dance degree plus years of continued training and the studio time and dancer fees that making new work costs. Years of dance training before you finish high school are the largest real cost in this career, but they sit outside what it costs to start from school leaving age. Independent choreographers usually fund creation through grants, including the Canada Council for the Arts Explore and Create program and provincial arts councils.
Independent choreographers usually fund creation through grants. The Canada Council for the Arts runs programs such as Explore and Create for the research, development and creation of new work, and every province has an arts council too.
Companies commissioning new pieces
Ballet and contemporary companies buy a set number of new works each season.
Musical theatre
The steadiest contracts in the field, with a rehearsal period and then a run.
Screen and commercial
Film, television, music videos and live events. Short and unpredictable.
Your own company
Many Canadian choreographers form a small company to make and tour their own work on grant funding.
Teaching and setting work
Restaging an existing piece on another company, or teaching at a school.
The exact path from high school to qualified.
Nobody hires a choreographer with no body of work. The route runs through dancing.
Train and perform as a dancer
10 years or more
Most working choreographers danced professionally first. You learn what bodies can do by using your own.
Make small pieces early
From your teens
Student shows, choreographic workshops, festival slots. Nobody needs permission to start making work.
Dance degree or company mentorship
2 to 4 years
A university dance program or a company's emerging choreographer program, which gives studio time, dancers and a showing.
Build a body of work
3 to 8 years
Pieces that have been performed, filmed and reviewed. This is your portfolio and the only thing commissioners look at.
Commissions and contracts
Ongoing
Companies, theatres and screen productions hire you by reputation and by who has worked with you.
Dance
Where it exists. Otherwise, studio training outside school.
Drama
Choreography for theatre and screen is storytelling with bodies.
Music
Counting, structure and working with composers and music directors.
Business or accounting
You will be self-employed, invoicing and applying for grants.
There is no licence or registration. What structures the field instead is a mix of union agreements and public funding. The Canadian Actors' Equity Association, the union for live performance in Canada, negotiates the terms under which choreographers are engaged by theatres and dance companies, including creation fees and performance royalties. Grants from the Canada Council for the Arts and provincial arts councils pay for much independent creation.
Quebec trains dancers in CEGEP (public college) programs that expect years of dance already, and has a French-language university degree with a choreography profile.
Finish Secondary V
Age 16 or 17
The professional dance diploma expects Secondary V in an Arts-études program (high school with intensive dance) in classical or contemporary dance, or equal training.
Danse-Interprétation DEC (Diploma of College Studies)
3 years
Program 561.B0 at Cégep du Vieux Montréal, in classical or contemporary dance. For the contemporary option, the École de danse contemporaine de Montréal takes 20 students a year by audition.
Or the Dance DEC
2 years
A 2 year pre-university program (506.A0), taught in French only, leading on to university.
University dance degree
3 to 4 years
UQAM (Université du Québec à Montréal) has a 90 credit Bachelor of Dance in French with a creation profile. Concordia's BFA (Bachelor of Fine Arts) in Contemporary Dance is in English. Both audition.
Fund your first works
Ongoing
The CALQ (Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec, the Quebec arts council) gives grants to professional artists who have lived in Quebec for the past 12 months.
Things you don't need, but that help.
Writing grant applications
An unglamorous skill that decides which Canadian choreographers get to make work.
Working on camera
Choreography for screen is framed and cut differently than for a stage.
Movement direction for theatre
Plays and operas hire movement directors even when nobody dances.
Notation or clear filming of your work
Pieces that can be restaged accurately keep earning royalties for years.
Rehearsal director experience
Running someone else's work teaches you how a company actually operates.
A regular teaching post
Steady income, studio access and a supply of dancers who want to work with you.
DTRC membership
The DTRC (Dancer Transition Resource Centre) supports dancers moving within and out of performing careers, which is exactly what becoming a choreographer is.
A good video reel
Commissioners and producers decide from footage before they ever meet you.
Day to day, pros and cons, where you'd work.
Studio from about 10am with a group of dancers on the clock, which means every hour costs money. You arrive with material, try it on real bodies, throw half of it out and build the rest. Afternoons go to music edits, notes and talking with designers. Evenings are admin: budgets, grant deadlines, scheduling. Closer to opening you are in the theatre all day doing spacing, lighting and cue-to-cue work, and the making stops.
The good
The hard parts
Things people don't tell you.
A dance work is protected under Canadian copyright law like a piece of music or a script, as long as it is fixed in some form such as notation or video. That is what makes performance royalties possible.
For the wider group that includes choreographers, Job Bank projects a moderate risk of more job seekers than jobs through 2033. That is why most choreographers also dance, teach or direct.
Independent choreography in Canada runs largely on grants. Writing a strong application is as much a part of the job as being in the studio.
Every list is built from the same numbers shown above, so you can see where this career sits next to the others.
Performing first, then the rest of the field. See every career in creative.
Last checked October 2026. Pay figures are typical full-time annual amounts in Canadian dollars, based on Government of Canada Job Bank wage data and published salary grids. They vary by province, employer and experience. Tuition is for domestic students. How every figure on this site is sourced and checked.
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