ON AND OFF CAMPUS: SUMMERSCAPE DANCE

Pam Tanowitz dancers left to right: Brian Lawson, Victor Lozano, Melissa Toogood, Maile Okamura, Zachary Gonder, Christine Flores, Lindsey Jones. Photo by Maria Baranova

The world premiere of Song of Songs, a major dance setting of the biblical love poem, was designated a New York Times Critic’s Pick. The collage of sound, song, and movement reimagined ancient rituals of love and courtship. Created by Fisher Center Choreographer in Residence Pam Tanowitz with music from Pulitzer Prize– and Grammy-winning composer David Lang, the piece was a “refined, restrained, and sometimes breathtakingly beautiful response to the poem,” according to Times reviewer Brian Seibert.

Acclaimed choreographer Pam Tanowitz has been the Fisher Center’s choreographer in residence since 2018, when her Four Quartets premiered at the Bard SummerScape festival. The Fisher Center now manages the administration of her company and supports the development and touring of many of her performances. This September, she and her dancers were in residence in LUMA Theater, creating a new program and interacting with faculty and students. Gideon Lester, Fisher Center artistic director and chief executive, spoke with her at the end of her residency about the experience.

Gideon Lester: What does your relationship with Bard and the Fisher Center mean to you?

Pam Tanowitz: It’s really a unique situation, and I feel immensely lucky. The Fisher Center provides developmental and technical support for my work, manages the logistics of my company, and provides funding, housing, and so on. But it’s much more than that; you also challenge me to think big. I’ve been able to create my largest works here—Four Quartets and Song of Songs. It’s not just about the money, space, and time, but also the invitation to work on the large proscenium stage of Sosnoff Theater and engage with expansive ideas. Beyond that, the Fisher Center tours my work and seeks other opportunities for the dances we’ve spent so much time developing. That’s so unusual. Normally a choreographer is given a week of rehearsal time and a few thousand dollars with which they’re expected to create a full show. After the performances, it’s all over. That’s not the case here.

GL: What were you working on during your most recent residency?

PT: I’ve been commissioned by Penn Live Arts at the University of Pennsylvania to set dances to Alice Coltrane’s music. At first I didn’t know what kind of dance I’d make. I love jazz, but I’d never think of choreographing to it. A lot of choreographers have gone there before me. Twyla Tharp, Trisha Brown. Anna Teresa De Keersmaeker made a whole evening of John Coltrane’s “A Love Supreme” and that gave me hope I could do something interesting. There are two main challenges: Would my movement vocabulary work with the music? Would the dance be identifiable as me? Then I realized, I can’t make something that’s not me. The other challenge is that jazz is based on improvisation, and that seems antithetical to fixed steps. I developed a new process with my dancers; I imagined them playing together like a jazz band. In all my work, the dancers have freedom of performance, but here they have even more agency. The steps are the same, but when they go and how they do it, how fast and how slow, is up to them.

GL: After you presented the jazz pieces, we screened a film at Bard’s Montgomery Place campus that the Fisher Center commissioned you and filmmaker Jeremy Jacob to make in 2021. Can you tell us about that?

PT: It was based on an outdoor dance that we made that summer called I was waiting for the echo of a better day, the first live show we created during the pandemic. We were originally going to premiere Song of Songs that year, but because it was so uncertain whether we could perform indoors, you and I decided to work outdoors in the Hudson Valley landscape. You also commissioned us to film it so we could reach a larger audience. What I like about it is that it’s not a straightforward documentation of the dance; we really made a film. The choreographic material is the same, but Jeremy created a loose narrative from it, and fitted my steps to his storyline. It was a true collaboration. We made the live dance and the film simultaneously, which was challenging, but I think it turned out beautifully. We were asking the question, What can we do in a film that I can’t do on stage? That was the point.

GL: Both the jazz pieces and the film show how much you enjoy experimenting with new forms.

PT: All my work is creative problem-solving. I look for problems that are interesting, that I don’t at first know how to solve.

GL: In September you also taught several classes.

PT: Yes, I taught a small choreography class and I was really able to work with the students and get to know them. I also gave feedback to Dance Workshop, which the whole Dance Program attends, and I visited your Introduction to Contemporary Performance class. I love teaching dance concepts to nonmajors—biology and psychology students—because it’s inspiring to me when they come at dance in a different way. They inspire me, and I get ideas from them.

GL: Is there something in particular you try to teach young choreographers?

PT: I try to impart the value of research. For instance, I’ll ask them to pick their favorite song and choreograph to it, and then when they come to class I’ll take the song away and ask them to perform in silence, which can be disorienting. Then I’ll ask them why they like that song, that artist, and I’ll assign them to do a deep research dive. Which artists does that artist like? And whom do those artists like? I want them to expand their knowledge. I tell them, I’m Gen X, I’m an analog person, I didn’t have Instagram or even the internet or a cell phone when I was beginning. I worked in the studio for many hours. I didn’t work for 20 minutes and upload it to social media. What I wish for young artists is that they just work. Do the work, build a solid foundation, be patient, and the rest will come.