How do you become a back up dancer?

How can I become a professional dancer for music videos and commercials?

• I am 17 years old and I want to become a professional dancer but I have not gone to a dance school before, but I used to dance for a little 'company' to learn dance from my heritage. What school can I go to and how many years will it take me to be a professional dancer on commercials, music videos, and back up dancer?

• Answer:

  You cannot just decide to be a professional dancer at 17 without any formal dance training. Dancers who dance in music videos are well trained dancers who take 15 or more hours of technique classes a week and have done so for years. To give you an idea of what is needed, a friend of my daughter who dances back up for Janet Jackson is ballet academy trained, modern trained at Alvin Ailey, was a dance grad of LaGuardia Arts high School (the FAME school) and came in 4th on SYTYCD in the USA a few seasons back. To get work in this field you need to have worked with a choreographer before or have an agent. To get an agent you cannot just do one style of dance. You need to be able to do what any choreographer wants. You cannot say wait... I can't do a pirouette, if one is needed for some reason. You also need to have worked as a professional dancer first. Getting work as a dancer is very competitive. You will be up against dancers who have spent their lives training for this. Putting in thousands of hours of training in before they are ready.You also need the body, facility and musicality for dance as well as the looks. You are really starting very late. That being said, you may have a great deal of facility for dance and I don't want to discourage you from trying. You will first have to take some ballet classes because you will need that to gain overall technique for a dance career. From there you can take your training anywhere. Pointe work is not necessary but strong ballet training technique on flat is. Find yourself an adult or teen/adult beginner ballet class and get started. A dance career takes so much sacrifice and dedication with no guarantee if you will be hirable when you have gotten trained enough. *Edit: Taking ballet for only 3 years and 2 hours a day doesn't cut it. Anything less than 15 hours a week of technique classes is considered recreational training.