Pam Tanowitz:
“We thought, We’re going to collaborate. What does that mean? Am I going to do five minutes? And then you? Am I working with modern dancers and you with ballet dancers? Then we thought, What if we meld it, so that people may not know who choreographed what? We were interested in seeing not only whether we could mix our styles, but whether we could blur the lines between our own choreography so that it could be unrecognizable, even to us.”

Brian Reeder:
“Even though Pam’s modern and I’m so-called balletic, we both have an appreciation for a general idea of beauty and line and approaching that in a way that is unique but not pretentious—or trying to do things just for the sake of being different. It’s not going to be fouetté turns, or hop-hop-hop on pointe. No Don Q, fancy-fancy. It’s just going to be a different way of exploring the pointe shoe.”

Jillian Lewis:
“My first love, before fashion, was dance. I always pursue my interests with tunnel vision, so I had to drop dancing for fashion.”

Tanowitz:
“I do think personalities come into play, and I just think Brian’s a great guy. I feel there are no egos on the table. It’s just about the work; there’s no bullshit. I think he’s the nicest guy that I’ve ever met in the ballet world. To find a man in the dance world who’s just really great and generous and not pretentious is hard.”

Reeder:
“Is there a guarantee that this fusion of two choreographers’ ideas will be something people will love? Or that I’ll even love myself? I don’t know. But I think the challenge of doing it is really worth my time.”

Tanowitz:
“My work is kind of too uptown for downtown, but too downtown for uptown. I like pointed feet sometimes, and I don’t want to apologize for it, but I’m also concerned with making that relevant. Brian works with real ballet vocabulary, and I think he’s trying to make that relevant too. So aesthetically, stepwise and vocabularywise we’re different, but conceptually, it parallels.”

Lewis:
“In terms of design, I am feeling really pale colors, articulated joints to accentuate the movement of the body, with maybe some really subtle watercolor-like painting over the fabric. Overall, I’d like it to feel really modern and forward—shall I say, slightly futuristic? No superhero, astronaut, robotic stuff, but a clean, sleek, form-follows-function aesthetic, and warming the whole effect with the painting-over.”