Pastoral
Fisher Center LAB Commission/World Premiere
Choreography by Pam Tanowitz
Décor by Sarah Crowner
Music by Caroline Shaw
Featuring Pam Tanowitz Dance
Inspired by Beethoven’s Symphony No. 6, “Pastoral”
June 27–29
Fisher Center LAB Commission/World Premiere
Choreography by Pam Tanowitz
Décor by Sarah Crowner
Music by Caroline Shaw
Featuring Pam Tanowitz Dance
Inspired by Beethoven’s Symphony No. 6, “Pastoral”
June 27–29
Pastoral is the latest world premiere from Fisher Center LAB Choreographer-in-Residence Pam Tanowitz at Bard SummerScape, in a major new collaboration with composer Caroline Shaw and visual artist Sarah Crowner.
Following the success of Four Quartets, named “the greatest work of dance theater so far this century” by The New York Times, and Song of Songs, regarded as “a thing of beauty” by The Guardian, Tanowitz continues her series of major performances that respond to masterworks of the past.
Setting the dance to Beethoven’s beloved Symphony No. 6 in F Major, the “Pastoral,” Tanowitz then removes the music, replacing it in part with silence, in part with a specially commissioned score by her long-time collaborator, renowned composer Caroline Shaw, which itself responds to and transforms the Beethoven score. The décor for the production will be created by Brooklyn-based painter Sarah Crowner, well-known for her “cut & stitch” abstract canvases, which evoke pastoral landscapes in magnificent jewel colors. The resulting performance will be a gorgeous palimpsest of many artistic layers, with Beethoven’s evocation of the natural world as a guiding spirit.
Choreography Pam Tanowitz
Decór Sarah Crowner
Music Caroline Shaw
Costume Design Reid Bartelme
Sound Design Justin Ellington
Production Design Davison Scandrett
Associate Production Design Nicholas Houfek
Company
Marc Crousillat
Christine Flores
Lindsey Jones
Maile Okamura
Caitlin Scranton
Stephanie Tersaki
Anson Zwingelberg
Pam Tanowitz is a celebrated New York-based choreographer and founder of Pam Tanowitz Dance who has steadily delineated her own dance language through decades of research and creation. She is the first-ever choreographer in residence at the Fisher Center at Bard in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York, and is an assistant professor of professional practice at Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University. Other honors include the Jacob’s Pillow Dance Award, LMCC Liberty Award for Artistic Leadership, Doris Duke Artist Award, Herb Alpert Award, BAC Cage Cunningham Fellowship, Bessie Awards, among others. She has created works for Australian Ballet, New York City Ballet, Martha Graham Dance Company, Paul Taylor American Modern Dance, The Royal Ballet, Kennedy Center’s Ballet Across America, Vail Dance Festival, Juilliard Dance, Ballet Austin, and New York Theatre Ballet. Originally from New Rochelle, New York, Tanowitz holds degrees from Ohio State University and Sarah Lawrence College.
Sarah Crowner explores the spaces where geometry abuts gesture, materiality merges with composition, and the graphic confronts the handmade. Incorporating two and three dimensional works across a variety of media (painting, sculpture, installation, and set design), Crowner’s work points to an expanded field of painting, investigating the relationship between the element and the whole, and how parts build an entirety. She earned a BA from the University of California, Santa Cruz in 1996 and a MFA from Hunter College, City University of New York in 2002. In 2016, Crowner was the subject of a solo exhibition at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, North Adams, MA; a major monograph was produced on the occasion of that exhibition. Crowner’s work has also been featured in a number of group exhibitions, including the Whitney Biennial 2010, New York; Abstract Generation: Now in Print, Museum of Modern Art, New York (2013); Excursus IV: Primary Information, Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia (2013); Painter Painter, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis (2013); Conversation Piece, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (2014); and the Carnegie International Exhibition, 57th Edition (2018).
Caroline Shaw is a musician who moves among roles, genres, and mediums, trying to imagine a world of sound that has never been heard before but has always existed. She works often in collaboration with others, as producer, composer, violinist, and vocalist. Caroline is the recipient of the 2013 Pulitzer Prize in Music, several Grammy awards, an honorary doctorate from Yale, and a Thomas J. Watson Fellowship. Recent projects include the score to Fleishman is in Trouble (FX/Hulu), vocal work with Rosalía (MOTOMAMI), the score to Josephine Decker’s The Sky Is Everywhere (A24/Apple), music for the National Theatre’s production of The Crucible (dir. Lyndsey Turner), Justin Peck’s Partita with New York City Ballet, the premiere of Microfictions Vol. 3 for NY Philharmonic and Roomful of Teeth, a live orchestral score for Wu Tsang’s silent film Moby Dick co-composed with Andrew Yee, two albums on Nonesuch (Evergreen and The Blue Hour), and tours with So Percussion featuring songs from Let The Soil Play Its Simple Part (Nonesuch). She has contributed production to albums by Rosalía, Woodkid, and Nas. Her favorite color is yellow, and her favorite smell is rosemary.
Artwork: Sarah Crowner
The Green One (Window), 2024
Acrylic on canvas, sewn
110 x 80 inches
(279.4 x 203.2 cm)
© Sarah Crowner; Courtesy of the artist, Luhring Augustine, New York, and Galerie Nordenhake, Berlin, Mexico City, and Stockholm. Photo: Charles Benton.
Pam Tanowitz is the Fisher Center LAB Choreographer in Residence with support received from the Pam Tanowitz Creation Fund and Fisher Center Artistic Innovation Fund, with lead support from Rebecca Gold and additional funding from The William and Lia G. Poorvu Family. Fisher Center LAB is the signature residency and commissioning program of the Fisher Center at Bard.
Pastoral is a co-commission of the Fisher Center at Bard, Barbican London, and Dance Reflections by Van Cleef & Arpels. Commissioning support for Pastoral was provided by the SHS Foundation and King’s Fountain, with additional commissioning funds provided by the O’Donnell Green Music and Dance Foundation. Developmental support was received from the Harkness Foundation for Dance.
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Pam Tanowitz Dance (PTD) unites critically acclaimed choreographer Pam Tanowitz with a company of world-class dance artists and renowned collaborators in all disciplines. As a choreographer, Tanowitz is known for her abstract treatment of classical and contemporary movement ideas. The work is deeply rooted in formal structures, manipulated and abstracted by Tanowitz until the viewer sees through to the heart of the dance. The juxtapositions and tensions that Tanowitz creates draws upon the virtuosic skill, musical dexterity, and artistic integrity of the PTD dancers.
Since the company was founded in 2000, PTD has received commissions and/or residencies at the Fisher Center at Bard / Bard SummerScape, Baryshnikov Arts Center, Chicago Dancing Festival, Danspace Project, Dance Theater Workshop, Guggenheim Museum’s Works & Process, Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival, the Joyce Theater, ICA Boston, Lincoln Center Out of Doors, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, MANCC, New York Live Arts, and Center for the Art of Performance at UCLA. Pam Tanowitz Dance has been selected by The New York Times Best of Dance ten times since 2013.
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