Chapter One

Stanford Makishi, vice president for programming at New York City Center, interviews Pam Tanowitz

 

Tuesday, March 26, 3:54 PM
STANFORD to Pam
Hi there, Pam.
So this is the beginning of our email interview. When I do an in-person discussion, I usually try to map out the general shape of a talk and go from there. But that's because live interviews in front of an audience are almost like performances, and they need planning. I'm not going to do that here because I'll have the luxury of reading your responses and having some time to react to them. Maybe our exchange will go on forever (or until Irene tells us to stop).
First of all, congratulations on receiving the Alpert Award. The Award is intended for mid-career risk takers. I believe you are exactly that, but the risks you have taken have also been surprising in some ways. Your choice to make an evening-length piece to Bach's "Goldberg" Variations, for example, was what I saw as a huge risk. Some might cry, "What -- since when is Bach risky?!" But for you it was, after having settled comfortably into the musical worlds of Nancarrow, Wuorinen, and Ligeti. And taking on something as iconic as the Goldbergs would be daunting for any choreographer actually trying to do it. I'm sure you didn't choose to tackle that towering musical masterpiece because you woke up one morning wanting to take a risk, but why did you make this creative left turn a couple of years ago?

 

Wednesday, March 27, 9:55 AM
PAM to Stanford 

Thank you so much Stanford…I still have a hard time believing this award is actually happening…so grateful for opportunities to make and create work. You should know one of my favorite quotes before we start: 

“Speaking about dance is like nailing Jell-O to the wall,” Merce Cunningham 

I am mostly an intuitive artist; here it goes….

Why Goldberg? Well, first Simone [Dinnerstein] came to me, after seeing my work at the Guggenheim. She wanted to collaborate with a choreographer so we had coffee. She laid out all her CDs on the table and said, “This is what I play.” I looked at Goldberg and said, “No way I could EVER do that.”

Then I started thinking…that’s exactly why I should…I talk about taking risks…what does that mean to take risks, push yourself forward in any direction…making dance/art is always risky…something important goes wrong all the time…but - since in dance we have no “product” - all we have is process and I take that seriously.

But after the decision was made, I doubted myself so many times. Through making Goldberg I realized that there is freedom in responding to iconic work. There is freedom when you work against formal structures. I treated each variation differently. I wanted Goldberg to be an unannounced experiment - full of emotion and ideas and romance - but at the same time steering clear of convention and cliché. I was aiming to stretch the confines of established forms, exploring traditional vocabularies and their expectations to locate notions of nostalgia, memory, and the body. 

 

Wednesday March 27, 2019, 12:00 PM
STANFORD to Pam
While it's fairly common for a choreographer to approach a musician about collaborating, it's probably a little less so the other way around. What did Simone say about your work that compelled her to approach you? And had you established a connection prior to the event at the Guggenheim, or did she just happen to be sitting in the audience?

 

Thursday March 28, 11:36 AM 
PAM to Stanford 

Hi. Yes, usually it’s the other way around. Aaron Mattocks invited her to the Guggenheim show. The dance has original scores by David Lang, Caroline Shaw, and Ted Hearne. She was interested in how I used music. I think the project came to me at the right time. It was a problem to be solved, how could I take on Goldberg but my way. Simone has a very specific way she interprets the music. That was my way into the score and music. I don’t think I could choreograph to another interpretation. One of the biggest challenges of NW for GV [ed. note: the Goldberg piece] was grappling with the iconic achievements of and inevitable comparisons to the past: Simone and Glenn Gould (and many others), myself and Jerome Robbins.

Sent from my iPhone

 

Monday, April 1, 1:20 PM 
STANFORD to Pam 
Hi again. Sorry, but I had to pause because of Michelle Dorrance's run in our theater that began last Thursday.
I chuckled when I saw the original list of composers that you were going to work with before deciding to embrace Bach. That is definitely more the Pam that I know. I find your choreography to be intensely musical, or perhaps I should say that your work shows a deep understanding of the music you choose for your work. And that's why when people compare you to Cunningham - and that comparison is made all the time, which is certainly not a bad thing - I find that they are missing a large part of what you are doing through your work. Cunningham simply did not have the kind of relationship to his scores that you have. So I have to ask: What is your reaction to the comparisons that people make between you and Merce?

 

Tuesday, April 2, 6:33 PM 
PAM to Stanford

I think people look at style first, then content. At first glance there are similarities since I use the Cunningham technique and I love clean line and articulate footwork. But the way I make dances is very different. (I assume.) I don’t use chance like Cage and Cunningham. I use aspects of chance, setting up situations in the studio where dancers have freedom. That’s interesting to me.

I also think as I have evolved/matured a little as an artist and hopefully my vision is stronger my deeply personal take on movement grounded in custom is clearer…

Sent from my iPhone

6:38 PM 

When audiences are used to something more “identifiable “ like Goldberg...it creates a tension that allows me to work in experimental ways almost in secret

Sent from my iPhone

 

Sunday, April 7, 5:14 PM 
STANFORD to Pam 
Do you mean that hearing a musical composition that speaks to you immediately triggers a choreographic response, that your reaction to “dance music” is imagining a dance that ends up being what it MUST be? I know the simple answer to that question could be yes or no, but I wonder if you can try to describe - and I know this is a big question - the process involved in making a dance to a given piece of music?
 
Sunday, April 7, 6:59 PM 
PAM to Stanford

I actually mean that the dance in my head is never what it ends up being. If I made that dance -it would be the last dance I would make. Something goes wrong in every dance and that propels the next dance. I work with music in different ways 

Sometimes I’m inspired by the structure of a composition sometimes it’s a visceral reaction to the music. I always make movements in silence to start while I listen and play music in rehearsal 

The dancers and I set landmarks in the music while we work. It starts very free and open before we get super specific. 

Sent from my iPhone

7:05 PM 

Yes, hearing a piece of music I know if I can connect to it and choreograph to it. My commitment to new music has been a constant throughout my career. Interpreting new music by living composers, as well as the live performance of that music, is an integral part of my work, research, and process. I have very rarely chosen to work with classical music; the exceptions are Schubert’s Wanderer Fantasy and Bach’s Goldberg Variations.

What’s important to me is inviting the Audience in - even with harder or alienating music - to find ways to open the music up and let people in and possibly hear the music differently…a way to have a dialogue. There are many choreographers that make dances to music really well. I try to have a different take the dance/music relationship.

 

Saturday, April 13, 2019, 11:27 PM
PAM to Stanford 

Sometimes I think I work best with limits or boundaries so when I made Goldberg and 4 quartets the work becomes about the response my response to something “known.” The tension between my personal dimension against a formal or historical structure; there is struggle and it all becomes part of the dance.

Pam Tanowitz in rehearsal
photo by Erin Baiano

 

"Not only do I want to make dances, I want to understand how to make dances."
-Pam Tanowitz 
 
 
Still from Goldberg Variations
Photo by Marina Levitskaya. Pictured: Simone Dinnerstein, Maggie Cloud, Netta Yerushalmy, Lindsey Jones.

 

Four Quartets
 
Still from The Story Progresses as if in a Dream of Glittering Surfaces
Photo by Ian Douglas
 
Still from The Story Progresses as if in a Dream of Glittering Surfaces
Photo by Ian Douglas
 
 
"I make dance to play with steps, turning them inside and out. I experience different combinations of steps as objects, as things that collect onto each other and then they take up space and time."
-Pam Tanowitz
 
 

Still from The Spectators
Photo by Ian Douglas

 

Day for Night for Vail