How many days a week belly dancers work and what hours, how much they get pay?

Question:Bellydancers can work as many days as they want or as few as they want. Some professional dancers are booked for something every day or everyday for a few months and then they have a sort of break. If your a professional bellydancer you can make money from performing and/or teaching. So, if you teach you can offer classes as many days as you want assuming you have enough people to fill those classes. Teachers can also be active in workshop circuits in which they might teach a weeklong workshop and then come back to twice a week lessons and then go to another workshop and teach and come back to their own classes. Often the work schedule of a bellydancer is somewhat unstable with periods of a lot of work and periods of no work. On the performance side of course dancers are limited to the amount of paying gigs they can get. Restaurants and clubs usually only hire dancers for the weekends so Friday, Saturday, and Sunday are usually the perfomers work schedules. However restraunts also frequently hire more than one dancer and rotate who is dancing. So out of the three days that you could dance at a restaurant you may only dance once a week or maybe every other week. Bellydancers also work private parties and frequently "bellygrams". Some dancers are lucky enough to put on theatre pieces in which they do shows for a week or two at a performance theatre. Usually dance shows occur in the evenings or at night. Shows at restaurants and clubs often start somewhere between 6 and 10. Bellygrams often occur during the day and sometimes in the evening or night. Teachers often offer classes in the evenings but sometimes they do morning classes if there are enough students who will participate at that time or if it's on a weekend. As you can see it's hard to give a simple answer to this unless you get very specific about what you want to know. Rates for all of these things vary from region to region, city to city as well. There are some places that you can make $300 for a 30 minute show and some where your lucky to get $20. Bellygrams are something I've seen as cheap as $20 bucks and as expensive as $150. You can charge anywhere from $8 -$50 for lessons depending on how widely sought after you are as an uinstructor. Private lessons can be priced higher just as private parties can be more expensive. I know this doesn't give you a definitive answer and posibly leaves you more confused but bellydance is not an organized profession in which we all make a standard wage and work standard 9-5 shifts. Yet that's part of what attracts people to it.

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker: Bellydancers can work as many days as they want or as few as they want. Some professional dancers are booked for something every day or everyday for a few months and then they have a sort of break. If your a professional bellydancer you can make money from performing and/or teaching. So, if you teach you can offer classes as many days as you want assuming you have enough people to fill those classes. Teachers can also be active in workshop circuits in which they might teach a weeklong workshop and then come back to twice a week lessons and then go to another workshop and teach and come back to their own classes. Often the work schedule of a bellydancer is somewhat unstable with periods of a lot of work and periods of no work. On the performance side of course dancers are limited to the amount of paying gigs they can get. Restaurants and clubs usually only hire dancers for the weekends so Friday, Saturday, and Sunday are usually the perfomers work schedules. However restraunts also frequently hire more than one dancer and rotate who is dancing. So out of the three days that you could dance at a restaurant you may only dance once a week or maybe every other week. Bellydancers also work private parties and frequently "bellygrams". Some dancers are lucky enough to put on theatre pieces in which they do shows for a week or two at a performance theatre. Usually dance shows occur in the evenings or at night. Shows at restaurants and clubs often start somewhere between 6 and 10. Bellygrams often occur during the day and sometimes in the evening or night. Teachers often offer classes in the evenings but sometimes they do morning classes if there are enough students who will participate at that time or if it's on a weekend. As you can see it's hard to give a simple answer to this unless you get very specific about what you want to know. Rates for all of these things vary from region to region, city to city as well. There are some places that you can make $300 for a 30 minute show and some where your lucky to get $20. Bellygrams are something I've seen as cheap as $20 bucks and as expensive as $150. You can charge anywhere from $8 -$50 for lessons depending on how widely sought after you are as an uinstructor. Private lessons can be priced higher just as private parties can be more expensive. I know this doesn't give you a definitive answer and posibly leaves you more confused but bellydance is not an organized profession in which we all make a standard wage and work standard 9-5 shifts. Yet that's part of what attracts people to it.

According to my bellydancing teacher, not a whole lot. She dances for 2 sets for about 40 minutes each. She said she got about $30 for the night. It sounds super low but it was also a very casual restaurant. I'm sure nicer ones pay much better. She is good but she is a bit older if that makes any difference at all (I doubt it would).

I guess most belly dancers don't dance for the money nor dance at restaurants full time. I believe it's mostly for the love of dance and just some extra cash on the side.

The restaurants usually have dancers in the evenings of high traffic days such as Friday and Saturday. The evenings usually consist of a couple of sets starting around 5:30pm.