Dancer hire in Australia: the complete guide

Dancers are booked to be watched, and that single fact should drive every decision you make about them. Where will the audience be standing? Can the people at the back see anything below shoulder height? Is there a clear patch of floor that nobody has put a cocktail table on? Get those three answers right and an average troupe looks good. Get them wrong and a brilliant one performs to the backs of heads.

The figures below come live from the dance acts listed on this site, city by city. The range is wide because the category covers two quite separate jobs: a short choreographed number with costumes and a music cue, and hours of ambient movement that colours a room without ever asking for silence.

What the dance acts here are charging is set out city by city underneath. Dance pricing works per performer, so the honest way to read a quote is to divide it by the number of bodies and then ask how long they're on their feet. Two dancers doing a five minute feature and six dancers roving for three hours are both real bookings, and they land in very different places.

Costumes and choreography sit inside that number more than people expect. A routine built for your theme takes rehearsal time nobody sees, and the costumes are real money that gets amortised over a season of work. That's why a themed set costs more than the same dancers turning up in black.

Ask the troupe for a minimum performance area in metres and then go and look at that space with a tape measure. Lifts need height as well as width. Anything travelling across the floor needs a run. And a routine designed for a stage cramped into a corner between the bar and the cake table stops being a routine.

Surface matters just as much. Dancers can work grass or a marquee floor if they know in advance, because they'll change shoes and cut anything that needs a clean spin. What ruins a set is finding out on the night, when the choreography was built for a sprung floor and the reality is uneven pavers. Tell them what's underfoot when you enquire.

A feature set is a moment. Lights change, music cues, guests turn around, five minutes later everybody is talking about it. That works brilliantly after speeches or between courses, and it needs someone running the room to make it land. Tell the venue and the DJ when it's happening, or the moment arrives while half your guests are outside.

Ambient movement is the opposite job. Dancers in costume moving through a space over an hour or two, near the entrance or around the bar, giving the room something to look at without interrupting anyone. There's no cue to miss and no run sheet to blow up. If your event has no natural pause where everyone stops and watches, this is the safer choice.

The dancers listed here cover commercial and hip hop, Latin and ballroom, Bollywood, Polynesian, Irish, traditional Greek and Lebanese, burlesque and cabaret. Several troupes do two or three of those and will tell you honestly which one they're actually known for, if you ask them straight.

Cultural dance at a family celebration carries meaning for part of the room and pure spectacle for the rest, and the good performers handle both at once. Say who's in the room when you enquire, including ages and whether anyone will know the tradition well. It changes the set, and sometimes it changes which troupe is the right one to book.

Dancers need somewhere private to change, and a toilet cubicle is not it. A back room, an office, a green room, anything with a door. Costume changes between numbers make that space a hard requirement rather than a courtesy. Sort it with the venue before you confirm.

Then settle the sound. Most troupes bring their own track and need it played through the venue system, which means a lead, a socket and a person who knows the running order. Ask who is pressing play. When the answer is the DJ, put the dancers and the DJ in touch before the day rather than leaving them to sort it out in the ten minutes before the set.

How many dancers is this price for, and what does one more cost? What's the minimum floor area and ceiling height for this routine? How long are you on, and how many breaks? What do you need from us for music and changing? And can we see video of this exact routine with this number of performers?

That last one catches most of the mismatches. A showreel cut from a dozen different jobs proves the dancers can dance. It does not prove the eight person piece you're picturing has ever happened, and asking plainly is the fastest way to find out.