Time & Perspective Quote by Siobhan Davies

Davies answers like someone who knows how easily “full time” becomes a fantasy in the arts: a label that looks reassuring on a grant application and collapses the minute you ask who’s getting paid, and for how long. The first move is tactical demystification. She punctures the romance of the dance world with a payroll reality: six months, split into two tight three-month sprints. That detail is doing heavy lifting. It conjures the stop-start rhythm dancers actually live with - intense periods of creation and performance followed by unpaid stretches where the body still has to be maintained, rent still arrives, and “rest” is really hustling for the next contract.

The “but yes” is the pivot, and it’s where the subtext sharpens. She’s not apologizing; she’s negotiating. Davies is threading the needle between honesty and optimism, aware that cultural work often depends on sounding both responsible and possible. “It is possible we could do it in another year” reads like cautious hope, but it also hints at structural fragility: sustainability isn’t a matter of artistic willpower, it’s contingent on funding cycles, venues, touring economics, and the fickle timing of institutional support.

There’s a quiet politics here, too. By naming the blocks, she reframes what “employment” means for dancers - not a stable identity but a patchwork. The line lands because it’s plainspoken and slightly defensive, the tone of someone used to being measured against norms that were built for other kinds of labor.