Living with a label : the lived experiences of night club dancers

Abstract

Dancers are strongly judged and misinterpreted by society, and in time most of them are ashamed of their status and their job. The aim of this study is to investigate the psychological experiences of the dancers living with the stigma associated to their work. A qualitative research approach was chosen in the attempt of revealing the lived experiences of the participants. The participants of this research were selected through convenience and snowball sampling and consist of five female dancers. Data were collected through narrative style interviews. After careful transcription of data collected using thematic analysis, each transcript went under the process of coding. All the codes were clustered in themes and later in overarching themes presented in a table in the result section. Results show in the case of the participants that stigmatisation came from different sources like friends, families, customers and society in general. In most of the cases, this brings a great deal of changes in their relationships with others. Aware of the stigma associated to work, dancers create boundaries splitting the private life and working life.