Pam Tanowitz

Pam Tanowitz (born 1969) is an American dancer, choreographer, professor, and founder of the company, Pam Tanowitz Dance.^[1] She is a current staff member at Rutgers University's Mason Gross School of the Arts where she teaches dance and choreography. Her work has been performed at notable performance venues such as the Joyce Theater,^[2] the Joyce SoHo,^[3] and New York Live Arts, Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.^[4][5]

Early life and education

Tanowitz was born in the Bronx, New York, in 1969,^[1] and took ballet classes in high school.^[6] She earned a BFA in Dance from Ohio State University and an MFA in Dance from Sarah Lawrence College, where she was mentored by Viola Farber Slayton.^[7]

Career

Dance companies such as the Martha Graham Dance Company, the Paul Taylor Dance Company, and the New York City Ballet have commissioned works by Tanowitz.^[8] Gia Kourlas, a dance critic for The New York Times, describes Tanowitz as a "modern choreographer much admired for the way she recharges classical steps."^[9] Roslyn Sulcas, dance critic for The New York Times, says "Tanowitz, who worked in relative obscurity for a long time, is a kind of choreographic collector, a passionate student of dance history, techniques and styles. Her work deploys physical ideas and images from Petipa, Balanchine, Merce Cunningham, Martha Graham, Erick Hawkins, Nijinsky and more, but shifts lightly among them. And it doesn’t matter whether you know or recognize any of it. There is no insistence in Tanowitz’s work; its beauties flower and dematerialize before your eyes."^[10]

Awards and recognition

• 2009 Bessie Award
• 2010 Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grants to Artists Award^[11]
• 2011 Guggenheim Fellowship
• 2016 Center For Ballet and the Arts Fellow^[12]
• 2016 Bessie Juried Award^[13]
• 2017 Baryshnikov Art Center Cage Cunningham Fellowship^[14]
• 2019 first-ever Choreographer in Residence at the Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts at Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York^[15]
• 2019 Herb Alpert Award in the Arts^[16]
• 2020 Doris Duke Artist Award^[17]