For you, every day is practice day, from basic warm-up moves to choreography and new synchronizations. You also dance on stage in impactful and moving performances like Swan Lake and Romeo and Juliet. Depending on your role, you may take center stage or perform in a group . . . or both!
But how do you make sure each step of your resume is in line for a memorable final delivery? How can you ensure that your finesse as a dancer comes through?
Don’t worry! We’ve helped plenty of dancers get into the roles they wanted, and we’ve put together three ballet dancer resume examples and handy resume tips for you, that with our free cover letter builder will help you warm up.
Related resume examples
What Matters Most: Your Skills & Experiences
You know better than anyone that way more goes into your job than simply dancing. In between practicing, you may learn or teach production choreography—or even write your own. Your skills should reflect your versatility.
That means shunning generic stuff like “teamwork” or “communication” to make room for highly profession-based skills like “choreography” and “physical fitness” instead. Each skill should be a puzzle piece that fits together to say “ballet”.
Be specific, too. Don’t say “dancing”—of course you can dance! Specify that you also know modern or interpretive dance alongside ballet. Here are some examples of what we mean when we say to fine-tune your qualifications:
9 top ballet dancer skills
- Choreography
- Performance
- Positional Awareness
- Modern Dance
- Physical Fitness
- Mentorship
- Acting
- Costumes
- Balance
Sample ballet dancer work experience bullet points
Gorgeous! Recruiters want to see more than just what you can do, though. They want to see what you’ve already accomplished. And just like with your ballet skills, you’ll want to keep each experience as relevant to your profession as possible.
What you’re really showing recruiters through your experience section is what kind of impact you’ve had. How did your graceful poses make for beautiful brochures that increased attendance at your venue? When did your outstanding performances as lead dancer boost ticket revenue?
Oh, yes: Those examples are meant to end with metrics! Your impact needs to be measured with quantifiable data like attendance percentages and profits in dollars.
Check out what we mean:
- Posed for and prepared materials for media marketing campaigns to promote upcoming productions, increasing ticket sales by 17%
- Choreographed and taught 2 new pieces of art, leading to remote productions countrywide that increased studio awareness by 24%
- Assisted in designing and executing 3 virtual productions with the musical director to promote and sell online access to 31K viewers across 12 high schools, increasing dance student enrollment by 22%
- Trained in classical and modern routines and learned new choreography to mentor new dancers, boosting performance rates by 13$
Top 5 Tips for Your Ballet Dancer Resume
- Beautify your layout
- Our resume templates are ready for you to make your qualifications look perfect! Just remember to focus on delivering information first and foremost. A tasteful pop of color is fine, but avoid anything distracting (just like you’d avoid anything that distracts from the lead dancer!)
- Maintain a flow
- Use sleek, highly readable fonts and organize your bullet points to be sleek and lightning-fast to read. Recruiters don’t have a lot of time to spend on your resume, so make it easy for them to see how well-versed you are in ballet.
- Take the lead
- If you’re hoping for a more advanced role that involves larger dance roles or collaborations with less experienced dancers, don’t forget to demonstrate leadership. Talk about when you helped boost dance student enrollment or elevated your ballet group to new levels of choreography.
- Don’t forget your education
- If you have an impressive Bachelor’s degree in ballet, it belongs on your resume! Include any independent class certificates or dance instructor certifications, too.
- Showcase determination
- Ballet requires rigorous hours of practice on a daily basis, not to mention rehearsals and involved adaptations. Show recruiters you have what it takes by including experience points that feature long performance runs and extensive classes.
Use a resume objective if you have little to no experience or are new to the workforce, a resume summary if you have a lot of experience and want to condense your work history into a concise brief, and always in line with the job description and only of it adds fresh information that’s tricky to convey through your bullet points! Otherwise, your skills and experiences are likely to speak for themselves.
Your resume needs to be only one page or less, so if you’ve already streamlined your bullet points as much as you can and you’re still having trouble . . . you might want to put that lead dancer story in a cover letter!
While you might be an excellent backup dancer when needed, you want your resume to take the limelight on that recruiter’s desk, so customize your application according to where you’re applying. Revisit the job ad and look for whether they lean more classical or modern, and whether they do local or traveling performances.
