Expenses of an Oriental Dance Artist
I believe most of people isn’t acquainted with the level of investment an oriental dancer has. To enlighten you, today I will present you the expenses of a bellydance artist.
Some of my costumes.
1. This first big expense I present you here is the costumes. A professional costume is, mostly, hand and costume made by designers, and it varies between 300€ e os 700€ depending on the complexity of the costume and the designer’s name (some go to 1000€). Besides that, they are not meant to be used forever - it’s not as a bride’s dress but it’s close - so you need to buy costumes regularly. I buy, at minumum, 2 per year, but there’s dancers who buy with much more regularity.
Performance with LED Wings in my show ‘A Alma Feminina do Oriente’ (‘The Feminine Soul of the Orient’) in March 2019 in Sociedade Musical Capricho Setubalense, Setúbal.
2. Besides dance costumes, Oriental dancers also need accessories: who doesn’t like to see a fan veils dance, silk veils dance, wings, candelabrum, sword, candles, cane, etc. All these accessories that the dancer has to buy are not cheap either. The beautiful LED wings that many people love start its price at 100€ and go to 1000€.
3. Another big dancer’s expense is, of course, her dance studies. A 2 hour workshop with a renowned professional in an Oriental Dance festival is around 50€ (I already registered in 80€ workshops). A full weekend in a festival with all the workshops included (around 15 hours of workshops) is around 200€ and 500€. So, each time a dancer travels to a festival outside her country, pays a big value to study, and she has to pay the trip as well, the stay and food.
Some of the beauty products I use in my performances. You can know more about them in the post ‘My 5 Favourite Beauty Products’.
4. Not as expensive, but also weighting in a bellydancer’s pocket, are the videos and photographies. Almost everytime we perform and want to have material to promote, we have to buy our videos and photographs. In a festival’s case, we can spend between 30€ to 100€ to have records of our performances. We shall also reagularly invest on photoshoots and promotional videos hiring professionals, spending at minimum at least, 100€ each.
5. Besides all of these, we also need to be pretty and ready for our performances: which means big spending on hair removal,make-up products, hair products, nails, skin, etc.
There is also the normal costs of a business: investing in advertising, pay our website, computer, telephone, etc. As you can see, it’s not cheap to be an oriental dancer… did you know it was necessary this level of investment?