4 Tips to Building Your Professional Dance Portfolio

Are you thinking of dancing professionally or in college? If you are, now is a good time for you to put together the pieces for your dance portfolio. Your dance portfolio can be a helpful tool in finding your first professional dance job, so thinking about what to add into your portfolio is important. Read on for important tips on what to include in your dancer portfolio.

Here are 4 tips to easily build your professional dance portofolio:

1. Professional photographs
2. Dance résumé.
3. Business cards and video footage
4. Important supplementary materials.

Let's go a little deeper in for each one of them.

1. Professional photographs. Decide which types of poses work best for your body and display your strengths. You want to demonstrate impeccable technique so make sure you have someone help you perfect that technique prior to your photo shoot. Also, you might be applying for multiple types of dance jobs, so be sure to show a breadth of dance styles.
2. Dance résumé. Write a professional résumé highlighting your dance career and training to date. If you haven’t danced professionally yet, make sure to focus on what you’ve done to get ready to be a professional dancer. Include awards, camps, and intensives in which you have participated. Make sure this document is well-written and professional.
3. Business cards and video footage. Have a professional business card ready to go inside of your portfolio and have a hard copy or an online link of your dancing. Remember that this should be the best of what you can do. You want to choose something that showcases your skills and a dance that you have choreographed.
4. Important supplementary materials. Find documents that show what you’ve accomplished thus far in the dance world. Put in playbills featuring you, awards you’ve won, certificates of accomplishments and/or commendations, and letters of recommendations from your supporters. All of these “extras” will help the directors see more of you than just what is on the stage.

A well thought out and presented dance portfolio can help you land the job. Keep these 4 things in mind when you are building your portfolio!