Looking back at ballet and modern dance and moving forward the engine of history through newly created vocabulary, Pam Tanowitz both embraces and questions assumptions about what is beautiful, and compelling. Often showing the “seams” of dance-making, puncturing stage illusion, by, for example, allowing the audience to hear the scrim closing, and see dancers’ entrances, exits, preparation, and moments of rest, she reveals the theatrical gears as well as the human effort that goes into creating a dance, while simultaneously delighting audiences with the visceral experience of full-bodied, technical dancing. Embracing the chance procedures of Cunningham and Cage, unlike them she finds freedom choreographing to formal music. Her longtime commitment to new music by living composers, such as Charles Wuorinen, John Zorn and Annie Gosfield and live performance of that music, is an integral part of her work, research and process.

photo: Erin Baiano