Griff Braun

The views and opinions expressed by speakers and presenters in connection with Art Restart are their own, and not an endorsement by the Thomas S. Kenan Institute for the Arts and the UNC School of the Arts. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

A major theme that reappears in episode after episode of Art Restart is the fact that audiences/consumers, institutions/businesses and sometimes even artists themselves often fail to recognize that art is labor, not a pastime or an unconventional way to earn a living. A recent labor action by America’s premier ballet company served as a fresh reminder.

On February 6 of this year, by an overwhelming majority, the dancers and stage managers of American Ballet Theatre voted to authorize a strike. Among their demands were an increase in wages that had been frozen since the Great Recession of 2008 as well as an adjustment to their working hours. 

Represented by their union, AGMA (American Guild of Musical Artists), after approximately three weeks of negotiations, the ABT company members and management were able to reach an agreement and avert a strike. The terms of the new agreement include cost-of-living increases of between 9 and 19% (varying by rank) across three years​, their workday being shifted a half-hour earlier and reduced by one half-hour on Saturdays and new parental-leave benefits and a commitment to keep pregnant dancers on contract until the time of the dancer’s choosing​.

In this interview, Art Restart speaks with Griff Braun, AGMA’s national organizing director, who was himself once an ABT company member. He speaks about the nuts and bolts of how and why dancers unionize and describes the challenges and opportunities of organizing as an artist in 2024 America.

Choose a question below to begin exploring the interview:

• You were a professional ballet dancer for many years, and you worked with several different companies, both here and abroad. How did you eventually get into the work you’re doing now?
• What were the differences in going back and forth between union and non-union positions?
• You recently worked with Dance Theatre of Harlem to help them join AGMA. I’d love to talk about how that happened as an example of your work.
• You mentioned that there’s a lot of unionizing happening in dance companies now. What role do you think the pandemic played in that?
• What are some union-busting strategies that are used particularly with dancers?
• What might the average American not realize about what the life of a New York ballet dancer is like?
• Why do you think fewer contemporary-dance companies are unionized than ballet companies?
• Thinking systemically, what could be changed so that ballet dancers working today could enjoy and afford the fullest and safest career?
• Looking ahead at the next year, what challenges or opportunities are you most looking forward to?
• What makes you particularly inspired as you continue to bring artists into AGMA?

Pier Carlo Talenti: You were a professional ballet dancer for many years, and you worked with several different companies, both here and abroad. How did you eventually get into the work you’re doing now?

Griff Braun: From a fairly young age, early 20s, as a dancer I got involved in my own union, so I was a union member for many, many years. As you said, I danced with several companies, which I’m happy to talk about if you would like, but several of them were union companies, AGMA companies.

I was drawn to working with my colleagues, helping to advocate for my colleagues from a fairly young age. As I got older and towards the end of my career, I was offered a position with the union and applied for that job and eventually got that job.

Pier Carlo: Were there times in your career when you would transfer from one union job to a non-union job and back again?

Griff: Sure, yeah. Many, many times. Many times.

Pier Carlo: So how does that work in terms of health insurance, in terms of income? What were the differences in going back and forth between union and non-union positions?

Griff: Well, the differences are, as you’ve indicated, the pay is less. There usually aren’t any benefits with non-union work. You don’t have the same kind of voice in your job in terms of advocating for what you need collectively. You’re sort of on your own. 

In a union workplace, obviously, you do have that collective voice, and you are able to bargain for the terms and conditions of your employment, which includes things like your wages and safety conditions and work hours and benefits, all of those things. If I was working for American Ballet Theatre, I had full health insurance year-round because that was something that the dancers and stage managers bargained into their contracts. When I left ABT and I went to work for the Lar Lubovitch Dance Company, which is a smaller non-union modern-dance company, then I had none of that. I had no health insurance. I had a weekly paycheck but didn’t have any of those other things. It’s definitely different.

Pier Carlo: How did that union/non-union piece of the puzzle enter into your decisions to change companies?

Griff: Interestingly, at that point it didn’t. I was very fortunate, probably more fortunate than many dancers out there, in that when I left ABT, for example, a union position, I had a good bit of work that I had access to right away and was able to negotiate health insurance for myself through another company and then was able to also freelance and do some non-union work.

I think the next major company that I signed on with was the Metropolitan Opera Ballet. At that time, there was a full-time dance company at the Met, and that was a union job and a good one. In that case, the fact that there was a union contract there with full benefits, with good pay, with predictable work, did play a factor in me taking that job. I worked there for probably 10 years. I put myself through college doing that job. I got married and started a family at that time, so that definitely played a role in my choosing to accept that work.

Pier Carlo: How did that work, when you said you got insurance through another company when you were with Lar Lubovitch?

Griff: It’s a bit of a convoluted story. There was a company that I was a regular guest artist with, a ballet company in the Midwest, and part of what I was able to negotiate individually was for health insurance coverage after I left Ballet Theatre. But that’s very unusual.

Pier Carlo: Still, you made it work for you. Clearly, you’re a good negotiator.

Griff: Well, I don’t know if it’s that as much as when you’re in a non-union situation, some people are able to negotiate good situations for themselves, but it’s up to the individual and their position in the industry and the leverage that they have as individuals. Many, many dancers, most dancers, just don’t have that.

That’s part of the reason why a union is so valuable because when everybody stands together and speaks with one collective voice, then you do create the leverage to help get what you need. Because it’s not easy. [He laughs.] It’s not easy being a dancer.

Pier Carlo: You recently worked with Dance Theatre of Harlem to help them join AGMA. I’d love to talk about how that happened as an example of your work. 

Griff: Sure. It happened the way that it happens at other companies that we organize, where a conversation will happen between me and one or two or three dancers about just what the union is and how union organizing works.

Pier Carlo: So presumably two or three people in the company are elected or chosen to represent the dancers in these discussions?

Griff: Sometimes. Sometimes, there might just be a dancer who independently feels like there’s a need for some change and reaches out to me one way or another through a connection in the dance world. We have a web page on the AGMA website where anyone can go on and just fill out a simple form if you’re interested in learning about organizing for your workplace. That comes to me, and then I’ll reach out for an initial confidential conversation. So the connection happens in different ways. 

The dance world is very small, though, and even though I’m a good bit older than most of the dancers I’m working with these days, there are still connections there. A lot of dance companies have been organizing lately, so they are aware when their colleagues are doing this. Just a month or so before Dance Theatre of Harlem won their election, the dancers at Ballet Austin won their election and on and on. Over the last few years, there’ve been several companies that have unionized.

But usually, it starts with that first confidential conversation, and I will suggest that they think about maybe two or three other artists that they think would be interested in hearing about this and who understand the idea that these conversations need to be confidential. And we’ll go from there in terms of building the support necessary to win the union.

At Dance Theatre of Harlem, there were on-and-off conversations over a period of a few years until this group of artists decided they would be the ones to bring DTH back into the union. I say back into the union because Dance Theatre of Harlem was an AGMA company for many, many years. When they closed their doors in the early 2000s, I believe, and then reopened several years later, they reopened as a non-union company. This generation of dancers right now decided they wanted to come back to the union and to come back to having a voice in their working lives.

Pier Carlo: You mentioned that there’s a lot of unionizing happening in dance companies now. What role do you think the pandemic played in that?

Griff: I think it played a role for dancers. I think it played a role for workers, generally, who had a moment to step back. They were forced to step back because of the shutdowns and decided that conditions at their workplaces were not what they should be maybe. Or if they liked their workplace, they wanted to make sure that it stayed that way. I think for dancers, it certainly played a role.

In the wake of the pandemic, there have been a lot of companies that have organized and a lot of conversations about the fact that during the pandemic the dancers maybe didn’t have any say in what the protocols were for keeping their workplace safe and what they could or couldn’t do. Hopefully, it never happens again, but if something like that ever happens again, they want to make sure that they do have a role to play in what it looks like to go back to work in that situation.

I think it definitely prompted some dancers to want to do this, but generally I think there’s a movement afoot in the country among workers, and I think it was happening even before the pandemic. I’m sure there’ve been thousands of pages written on this time period and how it’s affecting workers, but I certainly think the political landscape played a role in that, starting in 2016, and the pandemic only amplified it. But there’s definitely a lot of momentum within the dance world.

I think part of it is motivated by the bigger picture, the political picture of the pandemic. But I think just as much, if not more, within the dance world it’s just that dancers are seeing that this can be done because their colleagues at another company did it. Whether it’s Sarasota Ballet leading to Sacramento Ballet leading to Nevada Ballet Theatre leading to Ballet Memphis, Texas Ballet Theater, Ballet Austin, Dance Theatre of Harlem, that’s just in the last two or three years —

Pier Carlo: Wow.

Griff: — and there’s more to come.

Pier Carlo: But at the same time, I imagine the first thing that management comes back with is, “Post-pandemic, we’re not earning any money. Donations are down, audiences are down. We can’t afford to pay our dancers more or to cover greater health insurance.” Is that generally what they come back with?

Griff: That can be part of it. I think it’s sometimes hard for them to say that because everybody’s aware that during the pandemic, many of the companies received a lot of funding from the government through the PPP plan, through the Save Our Stages program, and they received that funding at the same time that the company wasn’t working and so they weren’t spending any money. Coming out of the pandemic, I think there’s still a question about audiences around the country and what it will mean going forward, but I think many of the companies came out of the pandemic financially pretty sound.

I think what we hear more often — and the money piece is part of it — but we hear more general union-busting rhetoric, and it’s pretty consistent across the board. Small arts organizations and dance companies are in many cases no different than Starbucks and Amazon and other large corporations in terms of the vehemence with which they fight back against their workers having a voice. The financial piece and crying poor can be part of it, but it’s a much larger strategy, often guided by law firms and so-called union-avoidance consultants.

Pier Carlo: And so what do they bring up? What are some union-busting strategies that are used particularly with dancers?

Griff: It’s not even particular to dancers. It’s very much the same across the board. It’s generally the idea that the union is someone else — that it’s not you, the worker — that the union is somebody else that’s trying to sell you on a service, and you’re going to have to spend your money on union dues for that service, and the service doesn’t guarantee you anything. As the employer, we don’t have to agree to anything that the union wants. 

They also will say, “If you unionize, it’s going to cost the company a lot of money.” Dance companies will say things like, “It may jeopardize the repertoire that we do, and it may jeopardize our ability to hire this many dancers and to have live music.” And that sort of thing. The reality is there’s no immediate financial cost to a company with their workers unionizing. Whatever the financial burden ends up being, it’s based on a negotiation. The artists don’t get to dictate what the company does, but they do, as a union, have the ability to bargain, and the company is required to bargain with them. That’s a huge thing. That’s a really important thing.

Pier Carlo: I think the general public has a certain idea of what a New York ballet dancer looks like and how they live, based on TV and movies, right?

Griff: [He chuckles.] Yeah.

Pier Carlo: They live off of cigarettes and Diet Coke, live ten to an apartment. But we’re talking about ballet as labor. What might the average American not realize about what the life of a New York ballet dancer is like?

Griff: Well, I think the first thing is that virtually none of them smoke anymore. I think that’s no longer a thing.

Pier Carlo: That’s good!

Griff: Yeah, that is a good thing. When I first joined Ballet Theatre — and it wasn’t that long ago; I mean, it was in the ’90s — the lounge still allowed smoking at the studios, so when you were eating your lunch, you were being covered with cigarette smoke. 

I think there are almost two worlds here that I would need to kind of address. One is the ballet dancer in New York City that is in New York City Ballet and ABT and the unionized companies. And then there are many ballet dancers in New York City that aren’t in companies at all, that are kind of piecing a life together as freelance artists who supplement their work with other jobs, with teaching, with working in restaurants, whatever it might be. I think the tiny-apartment stereotype is still true because it’s New York City. Even dancers in the largest union companies, especially in their first five to 10 years, are still having roommates and living in tiny apartments in New York City. 

Pier Carlo: What’s the general pay disparity between a soloist and a corps de ballet member?

Griff: Well, I wish I had a single answer for you. Every contract is different. Not to get too far into the weeds, but that’s one way that AGMA is perhaps different from some of our sibling unions in the performing arts like Actors' Equity. I think that’s probably the one that we’re most often compared to.

Actors’ Equity has umbrella contracts that cover work at many different workplaces. There’s the production contract that covers all of Broadway, and so if you were asking someone at Actors’ Equity, “What’s an ensemble member’s minimum pay on Broadway?” they could tell you that. At AGMA, we bargain separate collective-bargaining agreements with every company, so it’s vastly different between New York City Ballet, let’s say, which is by far the largest-budgeted dance company in the country, and a company like Ballet Hispánico, which is a much, much smaller-budget company by like a factor of 10, probably smaller. So wages are very different between those companies for obvious reasons.

But in terms of the difference between a corps member and a soloist, as I said, it would depend upon the contract. It’s going to be on the order of probably $200 to $300 a week more for a soloist, maybe. But again, this is real broad spit-balling kind of answer, but something like that.

Pier Carlo: Would you say that a corps de ballet member at Ballet Hispánico, for instance, gets a living wage in New York?

Griff: No. This was actually one of the things I wanted to mention that maybe people aren’t aware of for dancers in New York City or professional dancers in contemporary dance anywhere. Even in the union companies, none of them are able to provide work for the dancers year-round. It’s a weekly kind of seasonal situation. The larger companies who are working 36 to 40 weeks a year, let’s say, are able to pay enough that the dancers can live on it. They make a living wage doing that, although they aren’t able to save much. 

I think for companies that work fewer weeks or are smaller-budgeted and therefore have lower salaries, they often have to supplement their work, and that can take a couple of forms. I don’t think too many AGMA dancers are working full-time jobs simultaneous to their work — there just wouldn’t be time for it — but they’re definitely filling in the layoff weeks with other work, whether that’s performing in smaller companies or teaching or just working another job altogether. That, along with unemployment benefits, helps them piece together a living.

Pier Carlo: Why do you think fewer contemporary-dance companies are unionized than ballet companies?

Griff: I think there are a couple of reasons for that. I think one is just a cultural thing, that the contemporary companies have typically not been union companies and just don’t associate with it and perhaps don’t even realize that they could be unionized. 

I think perhaps the bigger aspect is just the disparity in the budget. There are very few contemporary companies out there that even approach the budgets of even the smallest ballet companies. There are a few, but not too many. Alvin Ailey, of course, is an exception to that. Their budget is the size of a large ballet company, but they’re pretty much the only ones. There are a couple of others out there, and I’m hoping eventually we will bring them into the union. 

I know there is a whole world of contemporary dance out there that is largely project-based freelance work, and unionizing in that context is virtually impossible with the state of U.S. labor law. And yeah, we could talk about that if you want.

Pier Carlo: Yes, let’s talk about that!

Griff: I think one of the big obstacles that we face as workers in the United States and, of course, as artists that are workers in the United States is just that labor law dictates that when we organize, when we unionize, we do it one workplace at a time, one employer at a time, rather than what’s called sectoral bargaining, where the dream would be that we organize all dancers and the job of being a professional dancer is just a union job no matter where you’re working. We don’t get to do that yet, and I don’t know if we ever will, so what we’re faced with is unionizing one employer at a time. 

In the context of a project-based freelance-work structure, there’s no employer to organize. There are people that are working one gig at a time for a few weeks here and there. Often, it’s just a friend who’s choreographing something where they bring a group of dancers together, they pay them a little bit of money out of their pockets, they put on a performance and then that’s it. There’s not enough permanence to the work for us to be able to work with them to unionize.

Also, there’s an economic aspect to U.S. labor law as well, where there’s budget thresholds that an employer needs to meet before they fall under the jurisdiction of the National Labor Relations Act and the guardrails that go with it. Most of the contemporary companies out there don’t meet that. So that’s kind of what we’re facing there. 

That being said, there are some companies out there — I’m not going to name them — that I’m hoping to start working with soon to go down this road. Because, assuming we get over the hurdles that I just mentioned, there’s nothing about contemporary dance per se that doesn’t lend itself to unionizing. It’s work. It’s still work.

Pier Carlo: Thinking systemically, including rewriting labor law if you had that power, what could be changed so that ballet dancers working today could enjoy and afford the fullest and safest career?

Griff: I think there are two things. I don’t know how realistic they are, but there are two things. 

Pier Carlo: We’re dreaming now, so dream ahead.

Griff: If we’re dreaming now, then Congress passes what’s called the PRO Act, the Protect the Right to Organize Act that’s been around for a little while. That would make the path towards unionizing much, much easier for dancers and for all workers. That’s probably not going to happen anytime soon, but that would be one thing.

Then I think the other thing would be a complete change of mindset for Americans and their government in terms of the value of the arts and how we show that value by funding the arts. That’s one of the missing pieces to artists being able to enjoy and afford a full and safe career, just the constant struggle for an audience and for the funding that comes with it.

But again, both of those — wholesale change of U.S. labor law and massive increase in government funding of the arts — are probably not within reach anytime soon.

Pier Carlo: Looking ahead at the next year, what challenges or opportunities are you most looking forward to?

Griff: Well, I’m looking forward to more organizing, and there is more. I can’t say in this conversation, but hopefully within the next couple of weeks there will be more artists who are taking this step. I’m looking forward to a continuation of what I think is a real change in the labor movement and in the attitude of the public towards labor in this country for the positive.

Pier Carlo: You’re really feeling that happening?

Griff: Yes, I think it’s really happening. I think the corporate world, the business world, conservative politicians are fighting back with everything that they’ve got. And so a year from now … well, in many ways, a year from now is going to be interesting. [He laughs.]

There’s a real battle going on right now with workers waking up to their collective power and with employers and industries doing everything they can to fight it, including SpaceX and Trader Joe’s and maybe even Amazon going so far as trying to challenge the constitutionality of the National Labor Relations Board to basically just undercut the few guardrails that workers have, trying to get that declared unconstitutional at the Supreme Court, which with this Supreme Court is not out of the realm of reason. There’s a struggle within this country in many ways, of course.

Pier Carlo: You sound like you’re remaining optimistic.

Griff: I’m optimistic. I have hope because workers are standing up. But at the same time, I think — I’m sorry to go down this dark road — we’re all on pins and needles about the basic structure and direction of the country and whether it will continue on a path that allows workers to advocate for themselves and allows basic democratic functions, which is what labor unions are.

Labor unions are democracy in action in the most pure form, and we’re looking at a possible world — I don’t think it will happen — but a possible world where that’s not a thing anymore. I’m trying to remain optimistic, though, just based on the fact that so many workers are coming together right now and that, by most recent surveys, most Americans support labor unions in numbers that we haven’t seen in decades, probably since before the ’80s.

Pier Carlo: What makes you particularly inspired as you continue to bring artists into AGMA?

Griff: In each organizing campaign with each group of artists that I work with, sometimes for as long as a year or more before the group is ready to move forward and win their union, with each group I’m inspired by the artists that find their voice and step up.

I think that’s particularly true for dancers because, as you probably know, especially ballet dancers from a very young age — 5, 6, 7 years old — they’re told what to do and what to look like and what their body should look like and where to stand and where to look and not to speak up and to just do what they’re told.

Pier Carlo: Yeah, it’s like joining the armed forces.

Griff: Yeah. And that happens from such a young age that by the time they enter the career, they’re sort of trained that way, that they’re not supposed to speak up. With each group of artists that I work with that gets to that point of unionizing, voices emerge and people find the internal fortitude to speak up in a way that they haven’t before. By standing together, they find a voice that maybe has been suppressed for a long time, and that never fails to inspire me: the individuals that come forward and turn into leaders and carry the ball once they unionize and they go into contract negotiations. 

I think it changes the artists, and it certainly changes the workplace for the better for them and also for every artist that follows them in that particular company.

Pier Carlo: I imagine for a long time companies felt like they had a lot of power because most of their dancers were, A, very young, and B, largely female.

Griff: Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. I see non-union ballet companies that I work with where the female dancers are paid a lot less than the male dancers.

Pier Carlo: Still!

Griff: Still. Just in the last couple of years, I can think of one or two ballet companies — I won’t name them — that have unionized where that was a big issue for them. First of all, they often come to me and they don’t know what their colleagues make in term of wages, and so I very often have to prompt them to ask each other, start having that conversation, because sometimes it feels sort of taboo to ask someone how much money they make.

Pier Carlo: Sure.

Griff: But that’s really a way to make sure workers never know if they’re underpaid or not. So I encourage them to talk to each other: “Find out what you’re making if you don’t know.” Sometimes what they find out is that the women make a lot less than the men. Sometimes directors will say flat-out, “Well, there are just a lot more women to choose from, so we don’t have to pay them as much.” And so that’s definitely there. 

And you’re right. Ballet dancers are young when they enter this profession, sometimes 17 years old when they’re going into the workforce, and so not only have they been trained not to speak up from the time they were young children, but they’re still children in many ways. They’re still very young entering the professional world. 

But this exercise of the organizing process and having these conversations with their colleagues, really thinking about the job of being a dancer and how they would like it to be better, how they would like the workplace to be better, that process really helps them sometimes find their voice in a really inspiring way.