With the trend of globalization, the Creative industry has become a useful tool to compete in the global market. Fine performing art is definitely included, and dance artists play an important role in this field. A successful individual brand can prosper the dance industry and help dance artists stand out in fierce competition, even in the future when the agency system has a mature market mechanism. The researcher strives to delve into the necessities for the individual brand-building of dance performance artists, and further draws up ¡§The Framework of Individual Brand-building of Dance Performance Artists¡¨ based on Aaker¡¦s ¡§Brand Identity Planning Model,¡¨ McNally & Speak¡¦s ¡§The Inner and Outer Facet of Individual Brand¡¨ and Kaputa¡¦s ¡§Key Elements of Celebrity Brand-building,¡¨ in order to concoct suitable strategies. The research applies literature review, case study and interview techniques to collect niches and factors for the initial strategy framework. Furthermore, the way of evaluation applies Modified Delphi method with an aim to re-fortify reliability, validity and objectivity of the study. Finally, totally 4 main strategies and 14 secondary strategies are presented in the research result. The main strategies are as follows: (1) Analyze the artist personality, work image and the style of body expression, in order to grasp strength and overcome weakness in the process of building individual brands. (2) Build individual brand identity through unique choreography style and consistent characteristic; meanwhile, increase brand awareness through award acquisition. (3) Actively promote differential personal traits to strengthen image competitiveness. (4) Expand the global market and, with perceived quality, maintain long-term brand loyalty among customers; furthermore, achieve more benefits with the individual brand.

The research question that motivates this study is: how might I, together with a collective of dance artists, explore stability while embracing instability? Looking at the precarious lives of independent dance artists in the context of Europe, this research seeks ways to understand and cope with the various unstable aspects that come with this lifestyle and profession. I place this study in relation to current economic trends where the individual is increasingly in focus, with very few social security rights, and where the dancer is often faced with solitary living and working situations. Furthermore, today’s dancers are often no longer working for a single choreographer, nor solely working as a dancer – but are rather entering many different projects and roles, arguably contributing to a life constantly subject to change. In this research, together with a group of dance artists, I explore understandings of instability and stability, and furthermore investigate how collective action might reinforce senses of stability. I, as the researcher, have applied a performative, practice-led research methodology, along with support from post-humanist/feminist theories. The findings of this research demonstrate how instability can be viewed as a state of not knowing within the precarious life of a dance artist but also within creative processes, and that trust is important in order to cope with the unknown. The findings have further led me to discuss the complexity and entangling of stability and instability, unfolding in a joint phrasing of in/stability, where I discuss how the fluid practice of dance not only corresponds with the wider socio-political landscape but also to an ever-changing world.  Keywords: independent dance artist; precariat; collective; leadership; collaboration; diffractive analysis

Berlin-based Singaporean dance and multimedia artist Choy Ka Fai experiments with digital mapping, the storage and transmission of choreography and Asian spiritual dance practices. He has built a comprehensive and growing archive of recorded choreographies from artistic, spiritual, folkloric, and pop cultural contexts. It includes avatars of dancers, field and video recordings of dances and rituals and interviews with various protagonists. Choy Ka Fai explores altered and expanded corporeal states and the relationships between bodies and both worldly and spiritual phenomena. In his work, organic, material and data-based bodies appear side by side on an equal level and futuristic and queer potentials of human and digital bodies are made visible. In conversation with Lucie Ortmann Choy Ka Fai emphasises the fundamental importance of the practise of archiving for his work. He talks about his methods of showing and sharing his extensive, collected and created material in constantly new formats, ranging from performance, video installation, lecture to digital games, and how he continues to develop it further. He also reflects on the challenging processes of transferring and translating spiritual practises and dance cultures to different contexts and audiences.