Pam Tanowitz is a celebrated New York-based choreographer and collaborator known for her unflinchingly post-modern treatment of classical dance vocabulary. In 2000, she founded Pam Tanowitz Dance to explore dance-making with a consistent community of dancers. Tanowitz is currently Bard Fisher Center’s Choreographer in Residence.
Her 2017 dance “New Work for Goldberg Variations”, created in collaboration with pianist Simone Dinnerstein, was called a “rare achievement” (The New York Times). Four Quartets (2018), inspired by T.S. Eliot’s literary masterpiece and set to music by Kaija Saariaho, was called “the greatest creation of dance theater so far this century” (The New York Times).
In 2016, Tanowitz was presented with the Juried Bessie Award for “using form and structure as a vehicle for challenging audiences to think, to feel, to experience movement; for pursuing her uniquely poetic and theatrical vision with astounding rigor and focus.” Other honors include an Outstanding Production Bessie award in 2009 for her dance “Be In the Gray With Me”, a Foundation for Contemporary Arts award in 2010, Guggenheim Fellowship in 2011, the Hodder Fellowship from Princeton University in 2013-14, a Fall 2016 fellowship at the Center for Ballet and the Arts at NYU, and named a 2016-2017 City Center Choreography Fellow. Her work was selected by The New York Times Best of Dance series in 2013, 2014, 2015, 2017, and 2018.
She has been commissioned by The Joyce Theater, The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Bard SummerScape Festival, Vail International Dance Festival, New York Live Arts, The Guggenheim Museum’s Works & Process series, Danspace Project, Lincoln Center Out of Doors, Chicago Dancing Festival, Baryshnikov Arts Center, Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival, Duke Performances, Peak Performances, FSU’s Opening Nights Series, and the Institute for Contemporary Art/Boston.
Tanowitz has created or set work for City Center’s Fall for Dance Festival, The Juilliard School, Ballet Austin, New York Theater Ballet and Saint Louis Ballet; and has been a guest choreographer at Barnard College, Princeton University, Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University, Marymount Manhattan College and Purchase College.
Originally from New Rochelle, New York, Tanowitz holds degrees from The Ohio State University and Sarah Lawrence College, and is currently a visiting guest artist at Rutgers University.
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the story progresses as if in a dream of glittering surfaces, photos by Ian Douglas