How do you define success?

Paul Taylor: Being able to keep working.

Sarah Michelson: I haven’t. It seems very elusive. People can easily seem successful from a distance, or seem to have achieved the honors associated with success, of fame, wealth and station, based—or not—on their talent, drive, good looks, birth or the providence of perfect timing. I think ultimately, though, it’s personal and elusive.

Christopher Wheeldon: For me, success is heard: the mass exhalation when 1,200 people are moved by the perfect combination of music, dancers and choreography.

Has your idea of success changed since you started?

Michelson: Yes. I thought that people who made a dance for BAM, White Oak or the Lyon Opéra Ballet were without a doubt very successful people when I started out. I now know firsthand that those opportunities are like a great meal: fortuitous, extremely nutritious—fostering good growth—and fondly remembered. But, however satisfying, eventually you’re going to need to eat again anyway.

Taylor: No, it has not changed. Raising funds for the arts is harder now.

David Gordon: No, I have changed. I once thought, without thought, that there was a road to success and once you got there you were there. I didn’t know Tchaikovsky and Mary Pickford and whole milk could go out of fashion. I didn’t know that Beta would go away, and VCR would go away, and DVD will probably go away tomorrow. I didn’t know that success was a geographical, generational Gypsy caravan, and in order for someone new to get on, someone old has to get off.

Wheeldon: I used to think that success meant great reviews and loud applause. I know that’s not irrelevant, but for me it has become as much about how you get there, process and growth as an artist alongside the other artists you work with.

John Jasperse: In truth, the impact of those we look up to when we are young is probably almost always radically recontextualized over time. And in this sense, as our visions of the world are “humbled,” so to speak, our sense of what it is to be successful also hopefully shifts.

Where do you fall on the scale of success?

Michelson: I have been given many great opportunities to develop my dance-making skills. I have used each opportunity as if it were my last. I have worked with my close friends and collaborators for many years. I have been both well and poorly reviewed, and when I recently held an audition, about 100 people came. Most days I wake up in a self-deprecating panic.

Gordon: The only people measuring “success” in dance are dancers or their parents. And the only way they’re measuring “success” is by trying to earn a living without being a waiter. I’m too old to have parents anymore and I have been earning a living performing, choreographing, writing, directing and occasionally teaching for the last 30 years or so, so I imagine I’m somewhere at the bottom of the scale of success, but I haven’t fallen off yet.

Ann Liv Young: Everything is always changing. My perceptions. My situation. My understanding of certain things. I feel like so much depends on money. Money has changed for me. I can pay my bills; however, I’m paranoid. I’m always afraid that one day I will have no money and find myself in prison. I feel like I will never reach a point where I say, “Okay, I’m done. Here I am. I’m super happy. This is it.”

Wheeldon: Success is defined by all the elements that play into the creation of a new work: The dancers’ experience and their growth through new choreography; my experience as a choreographer and how fully I am able to realize my vision, as well as pushing myself in a new interesting direction; how many people leave the theater inspired and want to come back.

Jasperse: Recently a critic referred to me as “just about as successful as a downtown choreographer can get.” I am fully aware that this statement was written to be laudatory. I am also aware of how much condescension is implicit in it. The assumption is that a choreographer who has worked in the downtown New York City community has a limited scope of potential success—that their effect on the form and the culture will be rarefied at best.

Has there ever been a point at which you felt you hit the wall? How did you bounce back?

Michelson: At the risk of sounding sickly, the bouncing back is always from the ideas and the work. The work itself and the drive to make the dance that I have not yet made take me into the wall you describe and out again over and over.

Taylor: My company disbanded in 1976 due to financial difficulties. Anna Kisselgoff announced this in The New York Times. John Holmes, a Wall Street investment counselor, read it and re-formed our board of directors, who raised enough to keep our company going.

Gordon: I made solos. I got married. I choreographed duets. I started a company. I choreographed for my own company. I choreographed for other companies. I choreographed ballets. I wrote a play. I wrote, directed and choreographed for theater companies. I won Bessies, Obies, Guggenheims, Pew grants in theater and in dance—and then I died in L.A. I came back to New York and began again, choreographing for my own company at Danspace Project.

Young: I feel like that all the time. I’m always thinking that I’ve failed, that I could work harder. There have definitely been really hard times, but that’s when I’m most drawn to making something. I work through it. Also, I feel like I have a lot of support in Europe. That helps. I don’t really apply for grants in the U.S., because I’m pretty sure I won’t get them, so I have to be resourceful in other ways. That helps me bounce back.

Wheeldon: I hit the wall running, scale it and dive over, forward roll, assess the damage— bruises, etc.—then stand up and run at the next one. The day I can’t get over the wall is the day I set up a quiet bed-and-breakfast in the Cotswolds.

Jasperse: When you feel you have hit the wall, you are forced to regroup, to ask yourself why you are doing what you are doing. Why does it matter? The economic brutality of the field moves these questions forward sooner rather than later, which is perhaps an upside of the artists’ challenge. But I also think it is important to realize that art is fragile, that it is not a product, that it is not social work. I believe firmly that art should survive.

Is there more opportunity in Europe for a choreographer to become successful? How relevant is New York?

Taylor: Yes, more government backing there. We have more talent here.

Michelson: There is more serious literature and discussion about the form of contemporary dance-making in Europe, and more money. Perhaps that’s helpful for a notion of success. You might feel more successful if you were more seriously discussed.

Young: If you’re talking about money, then I would say yes. If you’re talking about doing only dance venues, I would say it depends on the venue and on the type of work you’re making. If you want to make money then you should start a really good band and tour all the time. You get paid right after your gig. You get way fancier treatment. I just figure I’ll keep doing what I enjoy and go from there. Also, a lot of my favorite festivals are the poorest. And some of the more wealthy festivals are a bit lame at times.

Wheeldon: New York has been largely responsible for my success and I am really grateful for that. Are there more opportunities in Europe? Maybe one might go so far as to say that there are perhaps a few more open minds. New Yorkers know what they like, which is in many ways a really good quality; it only becomes negative when it stops us from seeing past the end of our noses.

Jasperse: As a dance artist, it is currently likely that it is easier to live in Europe than in New York. I tried to make that shift at one point in my career, and frankly, I was not successful in achieving it. So I am still here. If I was younger, I would probably leave, as many gifted artists are currently doing. We must return to the question of how we can reframe a society and institutions within it, which gives the artist a reason to stay.

Gordon: New York is still perceived in the U.S. as the place to make it. I don’t think it means anything much abroad anymore. I was born in New York. It means the world to me.

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