Daily Inspiration Quote by Siobhan Davies

"They should be working, and there isn't enough work" lands like a clipped rehearsal note that accidentally tells the truth about an entire industry. Coming from Siobhan Davies, a dancer speaking from inside a profession built on constant practice and precarious pay, the line holds two pressures at once: the moral expectation to be productive and the material reality that the market can’t absorb that productivity. It’s not a complaint dressed up as a proverb; it’s a bleak little paradox that exposes how easily the arts get framed as both vocation and luxury.

The first clause, "They should be working", carries the discipline culture of dance: bodies must be kept ready, skill must be maintained, commitment must be visible. "Should" is the key word - part obligation, part judgment, part survival strategy. Then the second clause pulls the floor out: "there isn't enough work". The shortage isn’t about willingness or talent; it’s structural. Companies close, funding cycles shrink, touring networks thin, and suddenly the demand for excellence becomes a kind of cruelty when there’s no stage for it.

Davies’s phrasing also gestures at an unspoken audience: funders, institutions, policymakers, even the public that loves the idea of art but resists paying for the labor behind it. The line insists that unemployment in dance isn’t idleness. It’s a system that asks for full-time devotion while offering part-time opportunity, and then quietly blames the devoted when the opportunity disappears.