The Media, Entertainment & Arts Alliance (MEAA) Equity has reported that dancers at the Australian Ballet “have filed for protected industrial action at the Fair Work Commission following months of enterprise bargaining negotiations during which management failed to make an acceptable pay rise offer”.

This is not the first time that the Australian Ballet has faced unrest from within its ranks over issues of pay, but the last time industrial action took place was in October 1981. Outraged over proposed changes to their contracts, which increased the number of performances and effectively demoted some of them, the dancers went on strike for 26 days resulting in the cancellation of parts of the Melbourne and Sydney seasons. As detailed in the AB’s online history, some of the Company’s top dancers resigned in the wake of the strike.

^{Australian Ballet dancers strike in 1970. Photograph © the Australian Ballet}

The dancers also went on strike successfully in October 1970 outside the Canberra Theatre over the Company’s pay structure, holding placed with slogans like “Why pirouette into poverty?”

According to the AB’s website, the Company’s 80 dancers, together with a sizable support system backstage, present upwards...