Every blog post I've posted thus far has been geared towards giving you insight you can apply to your dance career pursuit, but this one's a little different. This one's for me. It's my way of counting my blessings. I'm acknowledging where I've been in my dancer career journey and how I've gotten where I am today.

Since auditioning is such a huge part of a professional dancer's career, the info in this post is priceless. Not only am I giving you a whole slew of valuable audition tips, but I'm going to tell you about my worst audition ever! It's important to me that you know that there is life after a failure. If I can recover from my epic crash and burn and go on to have a fulfilling dance career, then you can too.

Okay. So here's the story.

Networking is vital in developing your professional dance career, and I've laid it all out in my upcoming book, The Freelance in Dance Road Map. The book outlines four key steps to getting work as well as a plethora of additional tips to help you along the way. Here's a sneak preview of the section on networking.

"What has been your biggest obstacle as a working dancer?" My response may throw you for a loop. See  for yourself. 

When it comes to building your dance career, the impressions you make are even more important. Developing relationships and leaving positive lasting impressions are essential to getting and sustaining work as a freelance dancer.

When I started making money solely from my work as a professional dancer, tax time got so much more complicated. Get all your ducks in a row well before next year's tax season. Here are a few tips to help you do that.

My dance career pursuit was in the pits.  Part of my trip to "Bitter-Town" and "Resentful-Ville" was funded by my winnings from the Dare-to-Compare game I'm always playing. And it goes a little something like this...

I'd like to introduce you to Sole Talk, the "chat room" where our working dancer tribe can ask questions that haven't been covered yet on TheWorkingDancer.com. Tweet your question to me at @ChoreoByShate, and I'll feature it on my next session of Sole Talk.  First up, what to do after your gotten your college dance degree.

I realized that my ego was not letting me be great. Even though her (as in my ego) intentions may have been pure, she was keeping me from living my life to the fullest.  Don't let your ego keep your from fulfilling your dance career dreams.

So there I was....emotions running high, tears streaming down my face, fighting to be heard and for the chance to follow my heart.  My dreams of becoming a professional dancer were within reach, and I went for it.

Creating a dance career is definitely not your cookie cutter career where you enroll in a training program and are guaranteed a job with a salary and benefits upon completion. Instead, choosing a dance career affords you the opportunity to create the life and jobs you want.