Tracey Emin has made her own life story the subject of her art. She is the content of her work. In a very immediate way, which is sometimes tragic and sometimes extremely humorous, she expresses her hopes, humiliations, failures and successes, as she does here in the video film Why I Never Became a Dancer (1995).

In the video Why I Never Became a Dancer the artist tells the disconcerting story of her life as a young adolescent in the English beach resort of Margate, of the boredom, her refusal to attend school, the beauty of the beach, her sex with endless numbers of boys, an her love for dance. Her hope of escaping Margate by winning a dance contest proves an illusion, because during her performance the audience chants: ‘slut, slut, slut’. The video images of Margate are suddenly replaced by an apartment in London. To music by Marvin Gay, Emin dances her bitter-sweet revenge on those boys in her past.