EXPOSED
Choreography is made in a studio, on specific bodies, in real time — teaching phrases, adjusting for a dancer's injury or line, fixing spacing against a live set and a lighting cue. AI can already generate movement concepts, reference reels, notation, grant narratives and audition marketing copy, but it cannot rehearse a company or take responsibility for what happens onstage on opening night. The occupation has no licensure or liability shield at all, and the real threat to this tiny field is budget contraction in dance, theater, film and commercial work rather than a machine replacing the rehearsal room.
Part 2020 shock, part continued decline in the years since.
Median pay $46,330 → $55,310 -4.5% in real terms
This line is counted by the Bureau of Labor Statistics — the one figure on this page that isn't a judgement of ours. Headcount moves on demand, offshoring, demographics and the business cycle, and automation is one term among several, often not the loudest.
So a falling line is not evidence that AI did it, and a rising one is not evidence that it won't. Both happen in this register: some occupations resist automation and shrink anyway, others are highly automatable and keep growing. The marked year is 2020.
BLS projection, 2024–2034
+6.1%
Percentage only. The projection counts a different population from the 2,860 above — it includes self-employed workers, which for this occupation is most of them, so the two headcounts are not comparable.
Growing, and only partly exposed
The BLS expects +6.1% more of these jobs by 2034, and at 61/100 the work is only partly exposed — some tasks are automatable, the core of the job is not. Nothing here is in tension.
Different clocks. The score is what current AI could do to this work today. The projection is how many of these jobs will exist in 2034. Everything between the two — how fast employers actually adopt, whether demand grows in the meantime — is why they can point opposite ways without either being wrong.
~700 openings a year on average, including replacing people who leave.
Dance MakerDance MasterChoreographerDance DirectorDancing MasterBallet DirectorDance InstructorDance ChoreographerOpera ChoreographerChoreography DirectorMusical ChoreographerTeaching Choreographer
Holding it up: embodiment . Weakest point: liability shield .
Tasks largely resist digitisation Setting a phrase means counting a company in, watching eight dancers do it wrong in eight different ways, and re-shaping the movement on the spot for the one with a bad ankle and the one whose extension changes the picture — the only genuinely digitisable parts are the pre-viz sketches, Labanotation write-ups, and reel edits, which is what keeps this at 16 and not 19.
Hands-on in uncontrolled environments You demonstrate full-out on marley, spike spacing against a set that arrives late, and adjust wing entrances during tech with a live lighting cue; the studio and stage are uncontrolled spaces where floors, sightlines and bodies change every day, so 18 rather than a controlled-lab 13.
No licence, no signature requirement There is no choreographic licence, no board, no exam — you can be hired to set work on a Broadway ensemble with nothing but a reel, and when a dancer is hurt it is the producer's insurance and the AGMA agreement that answer, not your credential.
Meaningful discretion You decide whether a lift is safe enough to keep with a fatigued cast, whether to cut a section three days from opening, and how to restage a dead spot in the music — real authority with genuine consequences, but the director, producer and music hold veto above you, which caps it below the 14+ band.
The verdict above describes this occupation as a whole. Almost nobody does the typical version of a job — tick what's actually in your week and see how your own mix sits.
Your task mix speaks to task resistance (16/20 here) — how much of the day's work current AI already does. That is the dimension the boxes above are about.
It cannot move the other three. Liability shield (1/20) is whether the law requires a licensed human to sign. Trust premium (13/20) is whether buyers specifically pay for a person. Judgment and accountability (13/20) is whether the role exists to own consequential calls. Those are facts about the occupation's standing, not about which tasks are in your week — a paralegal who does only trial exhibits still holds no licence. Together they are 27 of this occupation's 61 points (44%).
Embodiment (18/20) is also a property of the work rather than the worker, but we don't tag individual tasks as physical or not, so the picker can't tell you anything about it. That's a limit of this tool, not a claim.
Did we get the list right? Tell us what's missing — the tasks are written from the outside, and you're reading this from the inside.
No occupation passed every test: close enough to choreographers on skills and subject matter, at least 10 points more resistant, no big jump in training, no new licence, no pay cut, and not shrinking on its own. That happens for 223 of the 654 occupations here that aren't SAFE, and it is worth stating plainly rather than leaving the section off.
The usual reason is that exposure travels with the skill profile. The jobs most similar to yours tend to be exposed for the same reasons yours is, so the near neighbours don't clear the gap — and the ones that do are a different kind of work, not a transfer of what you already know. Read that as a limit of this method, not a verdict that you're stuck: it only compares whole occupations, and it cannot see specialisation, industry, or anything you'd bring that isn't in a federal skill survey.
Here is that claim on your own job rather than in the abstract. These are the three occupations closest to this one by skill and subject matter — the places the work would most naturally transfer — with what the register scores them:
That is the whole problem in three lines. The nearest work is not meaningfully safer, so there is no move here that trades a similar skill set for a better verdict. This is not us running out of ideas — it is what the neighbourhood looks like.
The moves above are yours to make. This is the other half: what would have to change in the world for the occupation itself to score higher. None of it is in any one person's gift, but it is where the floor actually comes from. Scores here are not a one-way ratchet. Only two of the five dimensions — task resistance and embodiment — track what machines can do. The other three track law, what buyers will pay for, and who is answerable, and those move in both directions, often in response to the same pressure AI creates. If every lever below landed, this occupation would score around 73/100 — SAFE.
Task-mix shift: if reference-reel generation, notation, grant narratives and marketing copy are absorbed by tools, what remains is the rehearsal-room tier — casting to bodies, injury adaptation, live spacing against set and light. The field genuinely has these two tiers, so the residual job is more resistant even as total paid hours shrink.
Union and festival-level provenance rules that make human authorship a marketed credential: e.g. an AGMA or SDC (Stage Directors and Choreographers Society) contract clause requiring disclosure of AI-generated movement material and barring choreographic credit to AI output, plus grantmakers (NEA, state arts councils, Creative Capital) adding a human-authorship attestation to eligibility. Audiences and presenters already pay a premium for named-choreographer work; formal certification of it hardens that.
Insurer and venue safety requirements naming a specific human as movement-safety authority for aerial, partnering, stage-combat and rake/set-integrated work — Actors' Equity and film production insurers already require a named stunt or fight director; extending an equivalent 'choreographer of record' sign-off for injury-risk sequences puts consequential calls formally on one person.
Not licensure, but a contractual near-equivalent: producers' liability carriers requiring a credentialed movement/stunt coordinator (SAG-AWA stunt coordinator standards, or a certified stage-combat credential such as SAFD) to sign off on choreography involving falls, lifts or heights before coverage attaches. This applies mainly to the film/theater slice of the occupation, not concert dance.
The limit. Even with every lever, the binding constraint is budget: 2,860 workers in a field where the threat is contraction of dance, theater and commercial production budgets, not machine substitution. High resistance scores do not protect a job that is defunded.
| New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ | 340 | $170,780 +209% |
| Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, CA | 100 | $75,000 +36% |
| Philadelphia-Camden-Wilmington, PA-NJ-DE-MD | 100 | $61,130 +11% |
| San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, CA | 100 | $99,430 +80% |
| Sioux Falls, SD-MN | 90 | $36,220 -35% |
| Sacramento-Roseville-Folsom, CA | 60 | $87,850 +59% |
| San Diego-Chula Vista-Carlsbad, CA | 50 | $49,560 -10% |
| Baltimore-Columbia-Towson, MD | 40 | $70,360 +27% |
| New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ | 340 | $170,780 +209% |
| San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, CA | 100 | $99,430 +80% |
| Sacramento-Roseville-Folsom, CA | 60 | $87,850 +59% |
We have no reported case of a named organisation automating this occupation. Not one deployment, not one announcement.
That is worth saying out loud next to a score of 61. The verdict above is about what the work exposes — what current AI could do to these tasks. It is not a claim that anyone has done it. For this occupation those two things have come apart completely: the capability argument is on this page, and the evidence column is empty.
Has AI actually changed your work? One tap, anonymous, and the running tally is public. Nothing else is asked of you.
Rather than check back: get the digest and we'll tell you what changed — or watch a single occupation from its own page.