Choreographer Pam Tanowitz and ‘The Burden of Ballet’
As she put the finishing touches to her new piece for The Royal Ballet, the American choreographer Pam Tanowitz talked to Culture Whisper about her way of making dance.
’In a lot of pieces I try to set out an artistic challenge, something I’ve never done before.’
As we speak she’s in the final stages of creating a new piece for the Royal Ballet, her fourth for the company, which will premiere as part of a quadruple bill of contemporary dance at the Royal Opera House this autumn. Named Or Forevermore, it’s a development of Dispatch Duet, a short piece she created on dancers Anna Rose O’Sullivan and William Bracewell for a 2022 Royal Ballet gala.
Anna Rose O'Sullivan & William Bracewell in Dispatch Duet © 2022 ROH. Photo: Bill Cooper
‘After the show in 2022 Kevin [O’Hare, Royal Ballet director] came to me and asked if I wanted to work on Dispatch Duet extending it, and I said yeah, I do, obviously. The music I used for the original was, I think, nine minutes, the full piece is 17 and he wanted all 17, so I went back to the composer [Ted Hearne] and I said “would you add new music?" It’s interesting: music that already existed, a dance that already existed and then creating a context, a frame to develop it.’
To put it another way, for Tanowitz this request was a new artistic challenge, ‘a puzzle to solve’:
Solving puzzles can be tense work, and today Tanowitz looks a little harried, confessing she didn't sleep much the night before as her restless brain sought ways of fitting in the missing pieces.
‘How to create a framework that the duet will become inevitable. Working with a bigger group of dancers – basically now the duet weaves in and out of the group until they finally find each other.’
Dispatch Duet received critical acclaim, with The Spectator declaring it ‘dazzlingly lucid’, The Observer ‘a luminous…wonder of a pas de deux’ and Culture Whisper ‘a glorious highlight of the gala.’
So, I wondered, wasn’t she mindful of that generally very useful advice, it it ain’t broke, don’t fix it?
‘No, because I feel that everything evolves, dance isn’t static, even when you perform the same dance again it’s a different dance even if it’s the same crowd, so I felt like it was a really interesting experiment to already know what I decided was going to be at the end – this duet – and how to make sense of that backwards. For me it was an interesting problem to solve.’
Anna Rose O'Sullivan & William Bracewell in rehearsal for Or Forevermore © 2024 ROH Photo: Andrej Uspenski
At this point we should maybe attempt a quick recap of what makes Pam Tanowitz’s work so special. Coming from the American contemporary dance tradition that has given us, among others, Jerome Robbins and Merce Cunningham, she offers an abstract treatment of dance movement, both classical and modern, creating formal structures that lead the viewer to the very essence of dance.
Her unwavering demand of dancers is, ’trust the steps’ and refrain from emoting.
‘I don’t like being danced at, I like being drawn in. That’s just me, other people might like other things, but to me it’s interesting when the dancer can draw me in through their physicality and movement and not through a persona.’
Or Forevermore is set to an orchestral score by Ted Hearne.
‘I’m a kindred spirit with him and what he’s interested in with music: he deconstructs, pulls apart, he slows down works that sound familiar, takes tradition, messes it up, so that’s where I feel it’s a meeting, an artistic meeting.’
Choreographing for a ballet company, as opposed to her own ensemble, brings its own challenges, she says.
‘I’m in this ballet world and I have to deal with it. I have to deal with the fact that I’m here in this iconic opera house with this iconic world famous ballet company, but my background is coming from modern dance. I have to wrestle with that and it’s hard, I call it “the burden of ballet”. I have to figure out why I’m making this here now with these dancers. When I make work for my company I have different problems that I want to solve.’
Whereas Dispatch Duet was created on just two dancers, Or Forevermore has two casts of 14 each – yet another challenge – but she enjoys working with The Royal Ballet dancers:
‘They’re superb dancers, I mean, I love these dancers, they’re such great collaborators! They know when I say what I’m looking for, they can get into that style, but I’m sure it’s challenging for them to go from story ballets to me going, do less, do less, do less, or do it in a different way, task-based, look at the person you’re dancing with, you don’t have to perform out.’
Pam Tanowitz in rehearsal for Or Forevermore with Isabel Lubach and Luca Acri ©2024 ROH. Photo: Andrej Uspenski
All Pam Tanowitz works are unmistakably her own, yet each new one is fresh, leading you places you haven’t been before, whether created for her own Pam Tanowitz Dance - so far London has been dazzled by Four Quartets and Song of Songs – or commissioned by, and making a nod to the style of a growing number of international companies.
As a final question I asked whether she felt that her own style was evolving with each new collaboration.
'I made a ballet for Miami City Ballet this summer and I’m starting a new piece for my own company, and I feel like my movement is changing slightly, I feel like with the movement for my company maybe I’m trying to loosen up a little, and with ballet I’m trying to incorporate the pointe work a little more seamlessly, so I feel like I’m always working out something.
‘Not just, oh this is my movement and that’s it. I think there is my search for construction and how that can evolve, still be me but kind of fresh, and go somewhere.’
Encounters is in repertoire at the ROH 22 Oct to 16 November. Full details and tickets here
