"The greatest creation of dance theater so far this century”- The New York Times

For information about upcoming performances of FOUR QUARTETS please see our events page or subscribe to our newsletter for the latest on our tour schedule.

Four Quartets, T. S. Eliot’s mysterious and beautiful masterpiece, is a meditation on time and timelessness and is now prized as one of the 20th century’s most stunning literary achievements. Seventy-five years after its publication, Eliot’s poetry cycle has inspired three astonishing contemporary artists to join forces in a ravishing union of dance, music, painting, and poetry.

A Bard Fisher Center Production

Premiere: Bard SummerScape
July 2018

Choreography by Pam Tanowitz
Text by T. S. Eliot
Scenic and Lighting Design by Clifton Taylor
Costume Design by Reid Bartelme and Harriet Jung
Sound Design by Jean-Baptiste Barriére
Images by Brice Marden

Music by Kaija Saariaho; performed by The Knights Ensemble

Dancers:
Kara Chan
Jason Collins
Dylan Crossman
Christine Flores
Zachary Gonder
Lindsey Jones
Victor Lozano
Maile Okamura
Melissa Toogood

with Kathleen Chalfant

Reviews:
“Pam Tanowitz has created dance theater of the highest caliber. ”- The New York Times

“…Pam Tanowitz’s own profound FOUR QUARTETS moves not only in time but as time. Traversing rhythmic and dynamic extremes – skittering en masse one moment and clearing the stage for a lonely adagio that radiates limbs the next – the dancers seemed to incarnate time. “– Financial Times

“Rarely do dance, music, poetry and image come together as sublimely as they have in FOUR QUARTETS” – The Berkshire Eagle

Four Quartets is co-commissioned by the Bard Fisher Center, where it received its world premiere in Bard SummerScape 2018, the Center for the Art of Performance at UCLA, Barbican, London, and Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts.

GAGOSIAN is the lead corporate sponsor of Four Quartets. Major support provided by Rebecca Gold. Additional commissioning funds were provided by the Virginia B. Toulmin Foundation, the O’Donnell-Green Music and Dance Foundation, the T. S. Eliot Foundation, King’s Fountain, Virginia and Timothy Millhiser, and Cultural Services of the French Embassy. Creation of the music was supported by the Thendara Foundation and New Music USA.

Photos by Marina Baranova

Premiere: John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts
March 2018

Choreography by Pam Tanowitz
Costume Design by Reid Bartelme and Harriet Jung
Music by Caroline Shaw (“Blueprint”), performed by Brooklyn Rider

Dancers:
Jason Collins
Patricia Delgado
Victor Lozano

Reviews:
“A beautiful new piece by Tanowitz” -The Washington Post

"Ms. Tanowitz’s ‘Blueprint,’ performed on Wednesday, had its premiere in March at the Kennedy Center. A witty, bright barefoot trio for Jason Collins, Patricia Delgado and Victor Lozano, it abounds with the brisk, darting and bouncing footwork in which Ms. Tanowitz specializes; you can sense how Ms. Shaw’s score stimulates it.” - The New York Times

Blueprint was commissioned by the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts as part of DEMO by Damian Woetzel.

Photos by Erin Baiano

"A riveting dialogue of movement and music."  - The New York Times

Deconstructing classical, formal and traditional movement vocabularies, NEW WORK FOR GOLDBERG VARIATIONS mirrors and converses with Bach’s iconic score in a delightful interplay of rhythm, style and idiosyncrasy, shifting between encoded gestures and virtuosic dancing and demonstrating the rich emotional world lying beneath the poised surface of the Goldberg’s musical architecture. 

Premiere: Duke Performances
October 2017

Choreography by Pam Tanowitz
Lighting/Visual Design by Davison Scandrett
Costume Design by Reid Bartelme & Harriet Jung

Music: Johann Sebastian Bach (1865 – 1750), Goldberg Variations
Performed live by Simone Dinnerstein

Dancers:
Maggie Cloud
Jason Collins
Christine Flores
Lindsey Jones
Maile Okamura
Melissa Toogood
Netta Yerushalmy

Produced by Aaron Mattocks

Reviews:
“Ms. Tanowitz has long been one of the most formally brilliant choreographers around. ‘New Work’…makes full use of her formal skills.” – The New York Times

“Tanowitz’s choreography devises its own language, idiosyncratic yet entirely consistent. Gestures live on the cusp of familiarity, and the brilliantly differentiated cast is indefatigable in following the movement to its never-ends." – IndyWeek

"The Goldberg audience seemed very sorry to see the show end. We had gone a long way with these dancers—seventy-five minutes—and we could have gone longer." - The New Yorker

New Work for Goldberg Variations was commissioned by Duke Performances / Duke University & Peak Performances / Montclair State University, co-commissioned by Opening Nights Performing Arts / Florida State University & Summer Stages Dance at the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston & received creative development support from the Maggie Allesee National Center for Choreography (MANCC) at Florida State University, The Yard at Martha's Vineyard, the NYU Center for Ballet & the Arts & New York City Center. New Work for Goldberg Variations was made possible by the New England Foundation for the Arts' National Dance Project, with lead funding from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation & The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation & support from the Mary Duke Biddle Foundation. General Operating support for Pam Tanowitz Dance was made possible by the New England Foundation for the Arts’ National Dance Project with funding from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation.

Photos by Marina Levitskaya, courtesy of Peak Performances @ Montclair State University

Premiere: Faena Forum
2016

Choreography by Pam Tanowitz

Original Score by Dan Siegler
Costume Design by Sybilla

Dancers:
Maggie Cloud
Jason Collins
Dylan Crossman
Sarah Haarmann
Victor Lozano
Lindsey Jones
With Students from the Miami City Ballet School

“Unpretentious, exploratory and fresh . . . Here is one program of 'NY Quadrilles' I would love to see again.” - Alastair Macaulay
The New York Times

Pam Tanowitz brings traditional forms into a modern day expression, in the “superbly suspenseful”, Sequenzas in Quadrilles, commissioned by the Joyce Theater.  With unparalleled vigor and discipline Tanowitz continues her career long investigation of dance as object by throwing a net over material from sources as varied as 19th Century ballet, early modern dance, American jazz and the movement of pedestrians.

Premiere at The Joyce Theater,
September 2016

Choreography by Pam Tanowitz
Light Design by Davison Scandrett
Costume Design by Reid Bartelme & Harriet Jung
Set Design by Suzanne Bocanegra

Dancers:
Jason Collins
Dylan Crossman
Sarah Haarmann
Lindsey Jones
Victor Lozano

Music: "Sequenzas for Viola, Trombone and Harp" by Luciano Berio, "Stuttered Chants" by David Lang
Performed live by members of The Knights

Reviews:
“Sequenzas in Quadrilles” rivets attention. Superbly suspenseful. . . .with juicily textured movement. ” -  Alastair Macaulay
The New York Times

“Tanowitz communicated via crisp shapes and patterns rather than story, exploiting the floor as much as the air. A lucid, dazzling performance, Sequenzas calls out for a longer run.”  -  Elizabeth Zimmer
The Village Voice

Support for the commission of Sequenzas in Quadrilles provided by King's Foundation and the Joyce Theater's Stephen and Cathy Weinroth Fund for New Work with additional support provided by The Joyce Foundation with major funding from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Additional support for the creation of this work was provided, in part, by New York City Center Choreography Fellowship and Fellowship at the Center for Ballet and the Arts at New York University.

Photos by Christopher Duggan

Premiere: Faena Arts Center, Buenos Aires Argentina May 2016
Collaboration with Sho Shigenmatsu

Music:  Dan Siegler

Costumes: Jessica Trosman

Lighting: Davison Scandrett

Dancers:
Dylan Crossman
Melissa Toogood
and dancers from Contemporary Dance Workshop of Teatro San Martin

Photos courtesy of Faena Arts Center

Premiere: Joyce Theater, February 2016

Music: Julia Wolfe, FOUR MARYS performed by FLUX Quartet; original score by Dan Siegler

Costumes: Reid Bartelme and Harriet Jung

Dancers:
Jason Collins
Dylan Crossman
Sarah Haarman
Lindsey Jones
Melissa Toogood

Review - 
 " The choreographer Pam Tanowitz is like an author who uses rigorous grammar to write nonsense verse; she’s orthodox and unorthodox, eccentrically pleasing and wittily obscure. You sense different layers of reality in her choreography, but they’re so interwoven with absurdity and brainy patterning that her pieces look elegantly hermetic, good-humoredly private."  - The New York Times

Photos by Ian Douglas

Premiere: Joyce Theater, February 2014

Music: Conlon Nancarrow, String Quartet 1 & 3 performed by FLUX Quartet

Costumes: Reid Bartelme and Harriet Jung

Review - 
 " Some of the dance steps, phrases and constructions by the choreographer Pam Tanowitz are among the finest being made anywhere today. They feature memorable footwork, strikingly elegant and witty combinations of lower- and upper-body movement, and complex, subtle, fascinating uses of stage space."  - The New York Times
 

"...lines of dancers executed unison patterns near the wings while more anarchic solos and duets seized the centre, and vice versa. Costumes in the same plush red velvet as the Joyce curtain reinforced this exchange between outside and inside, container and dance, anticipated end (when the curtain falls) and present moment" - Financial Times

Photos: Christopher Duggan and Ian Douglas

Co-commission - Vail International Dance Festival and NYCC Fall for Dance, 2015

Composer: FLUX Quartet, played with Greg Saunier

Costumes: Reid Bartelme and Harriet Jung

Dancers:  Guest from American Ballet Theatre:
Tyler Mahoney
Calvin Royal III
Devon Teuscher

" . . .Ms. Tanowitz’s peculiarly inventive humor (marvelous footwork, as so often with her) maintains a what-will-happen-next quality that keeps everyone on happy tenterhooks." - The New York Times

Photos by Julieta Cervantes

Co-commission - Vail International Dance Festival and NYCC Fall for Dance, 2015

Composer: Brooklyn Rider

Costumes : Reid Bartelme

Dancers: 
Guests from New York City Ballet:
Joseph Gordon
Gretchen Smith
Guest from American Ballet Theatre:
Calvin Royal III

Review-

" . . .Ms. Tanowitz’s peculiarly inventive humor (marvelous footwork, as so often with her) maintains a what-will-happen-next quality that keeps everyone on happy tenterhooks." - The New York Times

Photos courtesy of Vail International Dance Festival, Erin Baiano

Commission -  Guggenheim Works & Process, 2015

Music: David Lang, Caroline Shaw, Ted Hearne, Hannah Lash
FLUX Quartet

Lighting: Davison Scandrett

Costumes: Reid Bartelme

Dancers:
Maggie Cloud
Dylan Crossman
Lindsey Jones
Stuart Singer
Melissa Toogood

"Ms. Tanowitz and her collaborators maintain such a high level of imagination that what is fragmented by design can be experienced as a satisfying, organic whole." - The New York Times

"Tanowitz’s work may seem slippery in its off-centredness .... but it is not cocky. It is pensive. With the tour de forceBroken Story (wherein there is no ecstasy), it is distantly emotional as well." - Financial Times

Photos courtesy of Guggenheim Museum and Christopher Duggan

Premiered at the Joyce Theater NYC in January 2014

Music: John Zorn, Passagen 
Performed by Paulina Kim Harris

Photos by Andrea Mohin and Christopher Duggan

Commissioned by New York Live Arts

Music: Dan Siegler, Annie Gosfield played live by FLUX Quartet

Lighting Design by Davison Scandrett
Costume Design by Renée Kurz

Dancers:
Melissa Toogood
Dylan Crossman
Andrew Champlin
Maggie Cloud
Sarah Haarmann
Pierre Guilbault

"The Spectators,” her new dance that opened at New York Live Arts on Wednesday, is almost unbearably exciting. It’s a return to form that pushes further. The experience it offers a spectator is exhilarating enough to make “spectating” an inadequate verb." - The New York Times

"Her new dance, “The Spectators,”  .... was an example of her clear-eyed and catholic approach, in which Tanowitz melded highly technical choreography with a restrained visual design, strong lighting, and complex, multifaceted music. The result was a subtle, mysterious work, danced by six tremendous performers." - The New Yorker  

Photos credit: Ian Douglas