Ballet, contemporary, musicals, commercial work. The training starts as a child and the career ends early.
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Pay, the path, pros and cons and the facts on one printable page. Good for a wall or a guidance counsellor.
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What you earn and what it costs to get there.
Company dancer
$69,000
Apprentice or corps
$42,000
Principal or busy freelance
$104,000
Job Bank's national median is $32.94 an hour, about $69,000 a year at full-time hours. Treat that as the rate, not the year. Most dance contracts run a season of roughly 30 to 40 weeks, so real annual earnings usually land below the figure, and the people counted here are the ones who got contracts at all.
About $20 an hour and up
Apprentice or corps de ballet, often 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 and much less.
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.
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.
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. Paid by the day and well, but never predictable.
Cruise ships and resorts
Contracts of several months with housing and food included. Hard work, but you bank most of it.
Teaching
Nearly every dancer teaches. It is often the majority of the income.
The exact path from high school to qualified.
This is the one career on this site where the training normally starts in elementary school.
Studio training as a child
Ages 5 to 14
Ballet technique underneath whatever style you love. Several classes a week by age 12.
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.
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.
Perform
10 to 20 years
Apprentice, then corps, then soloist if you get there. Contemporary dancers work project to project instead.
Plan the second career
From your late 20s
Teaching, choreography, physiotherapy, arts administration, something else entirely. Start before your body decides for you.
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.
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.
Things you don't need, but that help.
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.
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.
Day to day, pros and cons, where you'd work.
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 good
The hard parts
Things people don't tell you.
The DTRC (Dancer Transition Resource Centre) has supported thousands of dancers since 1985 with counselling and retraining grants. Few other careers admit so openly that they end early.
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.
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.
Last checked September 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.