Dancer

Ballet, contemporary, musicals, commercial work. The training starts as a child and the career ends early.

Typical pay: $69,000a year
Time to qualify: up to 4 yearsafter high school
Demand: Limited
Licence needed: Nono licence to hold

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Where to study to become a dancer in Canada

Programs in the fields this career usually comes through. Each has its own page: what it takes to get in, the courses you need and what it costs.

Every university, each on its own page · Every college

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Quick answers

How much does a dancer make in Canada?

The median pay is about $69,000 a year. Across everyone in the job it runs from about $42,000 at the lower end to about $104,000 at the upper end. The source is listed under Sources at the end of this page.

How long does it take to become a dancer in Canada?

Up to 4 years after high school, on the usual route.

What does it cost to become a dancer?

$2,000 to $50,000 all in for tuition, fees, exams and kit. Living costs are not counted.

Do you need a licence to work as a dancer in Canada?

No. There is no licence to hold, though many employers still ask for training or a certificate.

What is the job outlook for a dancer in Canada?

Limited demand nationally, from government outlook data. Demand varies by region, so check your area.

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Dancer salary in Canada

What you earn and what it costs to get there.

What dancers make while working

Median

$69,000

Lower end

$42,000

Upper end

$104,000

Job Bank's national median is $32.94 an hour, about $69,000 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, $20.10 and $50 an hour. Treat that as the rate, not the year. Many dance contracts run for a season rather than a full year, so real yearly earnings usually land below the figure, and the people counted here are the ones who got contracts at all.

Where pay is highest

$37.89 an hour

The median in British Columbia, the highest of the four provinces Job Bank reports

Alberta follows at $35 and Quebec at $32.69. Ontario's median is the lowest, at $31.88. Apprentices and corps de ballet dancers often start on a part-season contract. Larger companies such as the national ballet companies pay under a union agreement with rehearsal pay, overtime and a rest schedule. Small contemporary companies pay by the project.

The career is short

Usually over by your late 30s

Most performing careers end well before other careers start peaking

This is why the DTRC (Dancer Transition Resource Centre), a national charity founded in 1985, exists. It gives counselling and retraining grants to dancers moving into, within and out of performing careers, with representatives in Vancouver, Calgary, Winnipeg, Toronto, Montreal and Halifax.

What it costs to get there

Studio classes from childhood: $1,500 to $5,000 a year, for a decade or more
Pre-professional or residential school: Several thousand a year, with financial assistance available at some schools
University dance degree: $7,000 to $10,000 a year in tuition
Shoes, therapy and bodywork: Pointe shoes alone can run into the thousands a year for a working ballet dancer

Roughly, all in

$2,000 to $50,000

Tuition, fees, exams and kit. Not rent, food or travel

The low end is auditioning straight out of high school and paying only for shoes, gear and bodywork, which is real money every year but not tuition. The high end is a four year university dance degree at the top of the tuition range with shoes and physiotherapy alongside it. Neither number counts the decade of studio classes at $1,500 to $5,000 a year that most working dancers had before they finished high school, and that is where the real spending happens. It is why scholarships and financial assistance at the major schools matter so much in this career.

This career costs the most before it pays anything. Families carry that cost for years, which is why scholarships and financial aid at the major schools matter so much.

Where dancers get paid

Company contracts
A season with a ballet or contemporary company. The closest thing to a salary in dance.
Musical theatre
Long runs, steady pay, covered by the Canadian Actors' Equity Association, the union for live performance.
Commercial work
Music videos, tours, award shows, film and TV (television). Paid by the day, and never predictable.
Cruise ships and resorts
Contracts of several months with housing and food included. Hard work, but you bank most of it.
Teaching
Many dancers teach, and it is often a large part of their income.

How to become a dancer in Canada

The exact path from high school to qualified.

The path to becoming a dancer, step by step

In this career the training normally starts in elementary school.

1
Studio training as a child
Ages 5 to 14
Ballet technique underneath whatever style you love. Several classes a week by age 12.
2
Pre-professional training
Ages 12 to 18
A residential or intensive program such as Canada's National Ballet School in Toronto, which combines full-time ballet training with academics and takes students by audition.
3
Audition for companies
Ages 17 to 22
Company auditions and apprenticeships, often in several cities and countries. A university dance degree, such as the Bachelor of Fine Arts in dance at Toronto Metropolitan University, is the other route in.
4
Perform
10 to 20 years
Apprentice, then corps, then soloist if you get there. Contemporary dancers work project to project instead.
5
Plan the second career
From your late 20s
Teaching, choreography, physiotherapy, arts administration, something else entirely. Start before your body decides for you.

High school courses that help you become a dancer

Dance or physical education
Where the school offers it, and any conditioning you can get.
Biology
Understanding anatomy protects your body and helps later in teaching and therapy.
Music
Counting, phrasing and working with live musicians.
Business
You will be self-employed between contracts and teaching on your own terms.

Time and money, at a glance

Years after high school: 0 to 4, but 10 or more years of training came first
Admission: Audition only. Grades are not the gate
Total cost: Tens of thousands over the training years, mostly before age 18
Paid while training?: Rarely, though apprenticeships pay a little

No licence, and no second chances on timing

Nothing legally stops anyone from calling themselves a dancer. What limits this career is the body and the clock. Company auditions happen in a narrow window in your late teens and early twenties, and injury can end things at any point. That is a genuine risk to plan around, not a reason to skip the career, but it is why dancers are told from the start to keep school and a second skill going.

Quebec routeIn Quebec? The route is different. 1 more card.

The path in Quebec

In Quebec, professional dance training is a 3 year college diploma at a specialized school, mostly in French, and you get in by audition.

1
Train through Secondary V
Childhood to age 17
Ballet training starts young. The École supérieure de ballet du Québec runs dance-study programs from Secondary I to V. The later you enter, the stricter the technical bar at audition.
2
Audition in the winter
Secondary V
Contemporary: École de danse contemporaine de Montréal (about 20 places) or L'École de danse de Québec. Classical: École supérieure de ballet du Québec, the only Quebec school for professional ballet training.
3
Dance DEC (Diploma of College Studies)
3 years
Codes 561.BA (classical) and 561.BB (contemporary). The Montreal schools give it with Cégep du Vieux Montréal. About 30 hours of dance a week at the ballet school, plus general college courses.
4
University, if you want it
3 to 4 years
Concordia's BFA (Bachelor of Fine Arts) in Contemporary Dance is in English, by audition and interview, questionnaire due March 1. UQAM (Université du Québec à Montréal) has a French bachelor's in dance.
5
Grants for your own work
Once you make work
CALQ (Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec, the Quebec arts council) gives creation grants in dance, open all year.

What helps you get ahead as a dancer

Things you don't need, but that help.

Skills that widen your work

More than one style
Ballet plus contemporary plus jazz gets you into musicals, commercial work and companies.
Singing and acting
Musical theatre pays the longest contracts in dance, and it needs all three.
Partnering
Strong partnering work is in short supply and gets you cast.
Choreographing
The natural next career, and you can start making small pieces now.

Nice-to-haves

Teaching certification
Recognized syllabus training lets you teach in studios worldwide between contracts.
Pilates or conditioning qualification
Steady income that keeps you in the studio and in shape.
A finished high school diploma
Obvious, and easy to let slide during full-time training. Do not.
DTRC membership
The DTRC (Dancer Transition Resource Centre) is open to any professional dancer legally allowed to work in Canada, and its grants pay for retraining later.

What being a dancer is really like

Day to day, pros and cons, where you'd work.

A typical day in a company

Class at about 10am to warm the body up, every single day, for your whole career. Rehearsals through the afternoon, often learning several pieces at once. A break, then a show in the evening with a warm-up beforehand. Physiotherapy and icing fit in wherever they can. Tour weeks replace the studio with a bus, a strange stage and a different floor every few nights.

The honest pros and cons of being a dancer

The good

You do the thing you love every day, not in your spare time
Company contracts are often union protected
Touring takes you across Canada and abroad
The discipline transfers to anything you do next

The hard parts

The performing career usually ends in your 30s
Injury can end it much sooner
Very few contracts compared to the number of trained dancers
Years of expensive training paid for before any income arrives

Work life

Typical hours: Class, rehearsal and shows, six days a week in season
Remote work: None
Physical demand: As high as any job in Canada
Unionized: Often, through the live performance union

Similar paths

Things nobody tells you about being a dancer

Things people don't tell you.

One of the youngest workforces in Canada

Job Bank counted about 13,600 dancers in Canada in 2023, and only 13% of them were 50 or older. For cooks the share is 22%, and for writers 39%.

Class never stops

Professional dancers take a technique class almost every working day of their lives, the same kind of class they took at 14. Nobody graduates out of the basics.

The audition circuit is international

Canadian dancers routinely audition for companies in Europe and the United States, and Canadian companies hire from all over the world. Your competition is not just the other dancers in your city.

How a dancer compares

Every list is built from the same numbers shown above, so you can see where this career sits next to the others.

Highest paying creative careers in Canada15 of 27

More creative careers in Canada

Performing first, then the rest of the field. See every career in creative.

Where these numbers come from

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.