Over the past decade, choreographer Pam Tanowitz has created a body of work that amalgamates the disciplines of ballet and classic modern dance; creating abstract movement that is meant to trigger the surfacing of our collective expectations of dance, classicism, composition as well as the concert going experience.
Tanowitz’s project generates work consisting of seemingly incongruous elements of beauty and awkwardness. This approach is used to underscore the often unseen but subliminally experienced conflicting forces that exist in the contemporary “post-everything” landscape. Tanowitz challenges our expectations, and therefore allows us an opportunity to witness a new paradigm. This emptying out of that which we have been trained to anticipate is at the very heart of her work.
Pam Tanowitz Dance, founded in 2000, and has enjoyed significant success. Tanowitz has received commissions and residencies at coveted New York theaters including Dance Theater Workshop (2009), Danspace Project (2002, 2004 , 2010), Joyce SoHo (2005, 2007, 2009), The Guggenheim Museum’s Works & Process program (2001, 2005, 2008, 2011), Baryshnikov Arts Center (2010), and Central Park Summerstage (2002). In 2001 Pam Tanowitz Dance was one of only three companies in the United States invited to perform at the American Dance Festival in Durham, NC, as part of the Emerging Generations concert. The company has performed on the Inside/Out Festival at Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival in 2002, 2005 and 2009.
She has collaborated with several illustrious dancers over the course of her career, including New York City Ballet Dancers Tom Gold and Elizabeth Walker. These projects were presented at Works & Process at the Guggenheim Museum (2001) and Danspace Project (2006), respectively. She has also collaborated with Ballet Choreographer Brian Reeder and has worked with dancers from the American Ballet Theater.
Tanowitz has set her work on Purchase Dance Corp, Oregon Ballet Theater and dance majors at The Ohio State University. She was on faculty for American Ballet Theater, ABT/Bermuda and has taught master classes in technique and composition at Hunter College, American Dance Festival, Sarah Lawrence College and Greenwich Academy.
In 2010 Tanowitz was awarded a Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grant, NYFA BUILD grant and support from The Jerome Robbins Foundation. |
Pam Tanowitz holds a BFA in Dance from the Ohio State University and an MFA in Dance from Sarah Lawrence College. During her two years at Sarah Lawrence College, Tanowitz had the honor of working closely with Viola Farber-Slayton. Viola became her mentor, and has greatly influenced her work and life. She also studied at the American Dance Festival and Bates Dance Festival and has studied choreography with Martha Myers and Dan Hurlin. She has set her work on NYU’s Washington Square Repertory Dance Company, The Steffi Nosen Dance Company and The Greenwich Academy dance Corp, where she was an artist in residence in 2005. In Fall 2006 the company was in residence at Ohio State University, where she set work on the dance majors and incorporated the students in the company’s final performance. Most recently Pam was invited to Oregon Ballet’s Choreographic Institute where she created a new ballet. She has taught composition at HunterCollege, and Master Classes at American Dance Festival. She is the 2001 recipient of the Scripps/ADF Primus-Tamaris Fellowship in Choreography and an Astral Career Grant from the National Foundation for the Advancement in the Arts. |
