I’m Louis, I’m 27, born and raised in Denmark and I graduated from Oslo National Academy of the Arts (khio) in 2015.

I work as a freelance dancer and choreographer, now based in Oslo. The last few years I’ve been in between Brussels, Berlin, Copenhagen, and Oslo which slowly made me feel increasingly rootless and missed being a more permanent part of a local field. My work is often concerned with gender, inclusive practices, and identity politics. Just to offer a bit of background and context.  

My first year of transitioning from studying dance into being a part of, and learning how to navigate, a very confusing professional field, felt incredibly lonely and stressful. It’s quite logical somehow, for most this will probably be the first time in their lives without the backing and direction of an institution. At least in my context. I think the crucial trick for a softer post studying first-year depression, is to hold on to the community that one hopefully built while studying. For the ones not going through a formal BA or whatever formal school one goes to, the situation might be different. But I can’t really speak from that experience, as I went through a quite standardized way of training and studying.

If I had to give my graduating self some sort of advice it would probably be to drop being secretive and feeling failed or shameful about needing jobs and alternative sources of income, especially the first couple of years.

I spent my first year out of school between working on a sex chat and doing some freelance projects here and there. In many ways it was quite brilliant, as the chat offered flexible working hours. There are things to take into consideration of course, before stepping into that line of working. Not something I would recommend as a general solution for most, but for me it worked at that time.

I later tried to score a job as a stripper in Berlin, but as it turns out, gay strip clubs aren’t really a thing there and I ended up getting rejected pretty much everywhere. I guess this is my way of illustrating that for most, choosing to hunt down a career in dance, things likely won’t go as planned. In my experience this field has a way of leading you down very unexpected and often exciting pathways.

 Dance is hard, but for the ones who persist and find ways of navigating the field, it will sooner or later also offer enriching experiences. At least that has been my experience. The trick is to locate your interests and find your communities. And for the ones finding out that dance wasn’t the right choice anyway, I’m sure you’ll find the right experiences for you somewhere else. 

There is no doubt that the Corona pandemic is hitting artistic fields incredibly hard at the moment. And when reading the next paragraph, it is of course important to take into consideration that we might be dealing with very different contexts, which can potentially also make my writing irrelevant to someone working under other conditions.

Having said this, and as a way to share some hope for the future and engage a bit with the current turbulent circumstances, especially for new graduates. I would say that I also believe that the pandemic might offer certain potentials. We are currently in a situation where the world is destabilized, including the arts communities. The situation therefore also opens up for alternative ways of thinking, alternative ways of producing, and for young people to find alternative ways of entering and engaging with the field.

We are, at the moment being forced to critically examine and rethink the structures, hierarchies, and whatever “norms” we’ve been dwelling into. We need to reimagine our ways of socializing and how we organize our practices as artists. Fortunately, this is something that most people who have studied arts in whatever field or context should be specialized in. I therefore also believe that we as a field are now needed more than ever.

Hope that this for some can work as somewhat inspirational or motivating.

Have fun, best of luck, and welcome to a fun and confusing field.