The role of dancer with Ratana is physically, metally and emotionally demanding. Any of the following will preclude your participation:

1. No divas. Seriously. No divas. You get to share rooms with other people (and it could get worse before it gets better). You have to risk breaking nails to help set up for the show and fix them (your nails) yourself if it happens. You have to move your own bags. You have to get up in the wee hours of the morning to do interviews as necessary and not be whiny about it. Really exotic personal demands or habits are deal breakers. “Plays well with others” must appear somewhere on your kindergarten transcript. Adaptability is required. When something goes wrong, you have step up and deal with it, not wave your arms around and wait for someone else to come to your rescue. There’s just no room for divas.
2. You have to be able to teach something – preferably more than one thing. At least a third of this tour is about teaching people something, so everyone gets to teach.
3. Stage presence is required. Big stage presence.
4. Improvisational-capable dancers only. If you get lost without a beat-by-beat choreography, you won’t be able to keep up with the show.
5. Diverse/fusion dancers only. We’re mixing cultures, dance forms and music. If your skill set is limited to preservation of a wonderful and ancient dance form, that’s great; but it’s not enough for this show.
6. Live music dancers only. There’s a band in this show. Live music is different.
7. You have to be able to deal with life on the road. If your life or personal situation makes being “away from home” for months at a stretch difficult, that’s no good. Everyone will get plenty of notice, but this is literally “pack your life up and dance.” The company will provide some limited support for your “life on hold,” including some storage space for your belongings, but it’s not enough to store a beloved couch and dining room set. This also means things like pets, children, boyfriend/girlfriends, husbands/wives have to be figured out, because they probably won’t appreciate being put in storage for months at a time. If someone happens to have a boyfriend or girlfriend or pet that is useful and independently qualified as support staff, crew or musician, that may be an option, but no promises, and only if bringing them along doesn’t negatively impact the tour or the show.
8. They have to “get” the musicians (whomever that ends up being) – this whole show is built around dancer-musician interaction.
9. Valid employment situation (your papers please), and probably no one under 18, at least not at first.
10. Your producer has to be able to deal with you. Several other key people (stage manager in particular) have to be able to deal with you. In fact, everyone has to deal with you – so any bad-blood history either needs to get fixed or you can’t play.
11. Sense of humor (in case you hadn’t noticed already).

If you’re still with us (and I hope you are!), bonus points are awarded for the following:

1. Playing instruments, especially exotic instruments from the geographic areas represented on the tour.
2. Bringing other tour-relevant skills – which could be anything from accounting to video editing.