A Nonconforming Ballet Heats Up Miami City Ballet’s ‘Winter Mix’

Choreographer Pam Tanowitz rehearses with Miami City Ballet dancers in “Coincident Dances.” The work gets its world premiere with the Miami City Ballet opening on Friday, Feb. 14 at the Adrienne Arsht Center, Miami, as part of the company’s “Winter Mix” program. (Photo by Alexander Iziliaev, courtesy of Miami City Ballet)

Speaking from her New York home base in January, choreographer Pam Tanowitz—currently held in the warmest of embraces by critics and knowing audiences—lamented the weather, confessing, “I can’t wait to come to Miami.”

As the Northeast shivered through an arctic blast, she looked forward to returning to put the finishing touches on “Coincident Dances,” the world premiere commissioned by Miami City Ballet as a red-hot component for its “Winter Mix,” also including re-stagings of George Balanchine’s “La Valse,” a glamorous and mysterious whirl to Maurice Ravel, and “Walpurgisnacht,” devilishly dynamic to passages from Charles Gounod’s opera “Faust.” The program opens at the Arsht Center in Miami, Friday, Feb. 14 through Sunday, Feb. 16. “Winter Mix” continues at the Broward Center in Fort Lauderdale on Saturday, Feb. 22 and Sunday, Feb. 23 and then at the Kravis Center in West Palm Beach, Saturday, March 8 and Sunday, March 9.

Miami City Ballet’s Steven Loch rehearses “Coincident Dances” by award-winning choreographer Pam Tanowitz for Miami City Ballet’s “Winter Mix” opening at the Arsht Center on Friday, Feb. 14. (Photo by Alexander Iziliaev, courtesy of Miami City Ballet)

It’s not that our subtropical climate sets the temperature for “Coincident Dances.” But that concept amuses Tanowitz.  She notes, “Weather is like dance—ephemeral.”

The choreographer further recognizes how surrounding elements seep into creation, saying, “Life is messy, and everything can be in there.” In her case that includes motherhood and a divorce, her Jewish heritage, museum haunts and French cinema—and, yes, the environment. She references her choreography for “The Seasons,” an opera to premiere at Boston Lyric Opera on Wednesday, March 12, the libretto by Sarah Ruhl springing from Vivaldi’s concertos to tell of artists in a retreat disrupted by the weather.

The collaboration, along with her concurrent MCB commission, is among the many high points on the choreographer’s creative landscape. Sought-after by prominent dance companies in the United States and abroad, Tanowitz continues to head her twenty-five-year-old troupe, Pam Tanowitz Dance. Film work and a professorship of professional practice at Rutgers University extend her resume, which certifies Tanowitz as one of the busiest dance makers on the scene today.

“Though I don’t need any more work, I’d feel stressed out if people stopped calling,” she admits. “With every opportunity for me to make a dance, whether it’s modern or ballet, I feel so, so lucky.”

Small wonder she’s mindful of self-care, faithfully putting in time at the treadmill.  “I have to do it every morning,” she says. “It helps me focus for rehearsals.”

She’s been steadily holding that focus, wide and deep, to great results—two Bessie Awards, a Jacob’s Pillow Dance Award, a Doris Duke Artist Award, and a Guggenheim Fellowship among her honors, all especially meaningful to a self-confessed late-bloomer.

Choreographer Pam Tanowitz with dancer Ethan Rodrigues rehearsing “Coincident Dances,” having its world premiere with the Miami City Ballet. (Photo by Alexander Iziliaev, courtesy of Miami City Ballet)

“I’m now 55. In New York since I was 23, I’d been choreographing for a really long time before people noticed me,” points out this Westchester, New York, native and MFA holder from Sarah Lawrence College.  “I had a totally different path. I wasn’t a dancer in a company who then decided to be on my own. And my company is project-based, the dancers freelance.”

Various modern dance figures have informed her work, with mid-twentieth century luminary Merce Cunningham looming tall. “I love his technique, the clean lines,” says Tanowitz. This connection comes by way of the late Viola Farber, a founding member of the Cunningham company and a force of her own, “She was my mentor at Sarah Lawrence,” says Tanowitz about the director of dance at her college. “She challenged me and retaught me how to dance. She changed my life.”

Considering Tanowitz’s  trajectory, many observers single out 2019 as a wonder year. A career upswing then raised the choreographer’s visibility to a starry firmament, with commissions from Martha Graham Dance Company, Paul Taylor Dance Company, New York City Ballet, and Britain’s Royal Ballet. Contacted for the current premiere by MCB artistic director Lourdes Lopez over two years ago, Tanowitz came by degrees into the company fold.

Adrienne Carter in rehearsal for Pam Tanowitz’s “Coincident Dances” for the Miami City Ballet’s “Winter Mix.” (Photo by Alexander Iziliaev, courtesy of Miami City Ballet)

At the end of 2016, to inaugurate the Faena Forum on Miami Beach, Tanowitz made “Once With Me, Once Without Me,” a site-specific work joining her company with advanced students from MCB School. In May 2019, the same month that New York City Ballet staged “Bartók Ballet”—its first Tanowitz piece— “Gustave Le Gray No. 1,” a quartet created for Dance Theatre of Harlem and Miami City Ballet, featuring a man and a woman from each company, premiered as part of Ballet Across America at the Kennedy Center. Tanowitz explains that “No. 1” uses ballet slippers while a “No. 2,” for her own troupe, has the same movement base adjusted for bare feet.

Tanowitz’s exploration of pointe work, to be on view in “Coincident Dances,” takes this balletic hallmark into her own territory. “A lot of younger choreographers,” she considers, “come into ballet to make a dance they think audiences want to see. I don’t do that. I make what’s interesting to me, and I always question things—an arm position or a head tilt. And I believe that’s also interesting for the dancers.”

MCB soloist Satoki Habuchi agrees, empowered by the choreographer’s openness to contributions from the interpreters.  One of seven men who, alongside eight women, make up the cast of “Coincident Dances,” he participated as an MCB School student in the Faena project. Now more experienced in contemporary work, he’s extended his talent adhering to Tanowitz’s dictum “to be a neutral version of myself. We don’t have to make things bigger.”

Still, even at their most natural, MCB dancers can be quite an eyeful. Habuchi tells how after Tanowitz saw him do an impactful jump in a studio class, she decided to incorporate it into her dance, labeling it the “Satoki Special.”

Hannah Fischer and Ashley Knox rehearsing the Miami City Ballet of Pam Tanowitz’s “Coincident Dances.” (Photo by Alexander Iziliaev, courtesy of Miami City Ballet)

Principal Hannah Fischer, whose wide range in contemporary dance dates back to her days at National Ballet of Canada, appreciates how Tanowitz encourages “honest intention.” This jives with the ballerina’s belief that her art form is about mindset as much as physical exertion. “Pam has a plan when she walks into the room, but she also lets us feel comfortable in the unknown. It’s fine if we make a mistake because she might end up liking it,” she notes.

Defying gender expectations, Tanowitz at one point asked if Fischer felt okay with circling the stage in a type of manège with traveling jumps usually reserved for men. Glad to take this on, the ballerina turned the opportunity into an off-the-playbook burst of excitement. Tellingly, both she and Habuchi point to a male duet—its soulfulness “truly awesome,” says Fischer—as a standout in the dance.

The choreographer is also unorthodox in not using counts in constructing phrases. Dancers take cues from the music, each other, and their internal responses. Whether in unison or in counterpoint, Fischer says she rides these currents in constant reference to the ensemble. Habuchi adds, “We have to look at each other, and I let the music guide me emotionally.”

Choreographer Pam Tanowitz with dancer Hannah Fisher rehearsing “Coincident Dances,” having its world premiere with the Miami City Ballet. (Photo by Alexander Iziliaev, courtesy of Miami City Ballet)

Tanowitz is using two compositions, the scintillating “Starburst” and “Coincident Dances,” by Jessie Montgomery, among long-trusted collaborators—here including designers Reid Bartelme and Harriet Jung for costumes and Brandon Stirling Baker for lighting—who bolster her conceptions.

Montgomery’s music, says the choreographer, “feels very cosmopolitan—entertaining in the smartest way possible. It’s very inspiring.”

WHAT:  Miami City Ballet’s Winter Mix 

WHEN: 7:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday, Feb. 14 and 15; 2 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 16

 WHERE: Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts, 1300 Biscayne Blvd., Miami

ADDITIONAL PERFORMANCES:  Broward Center for the Performing Arts, 201 SW Fifth Ave., Fort Lauderdale, 7:30 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 22; 2 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 23; Kravis Center for the Performing Arts, 701 Okeechobee Blvd., West Palm Beach; 2 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. Saturday, March 8; 1 p.m. Sunday, March 9

 COST:  $25-$225, depending on show time and venue.

 INFORMATION: 305-929-7010 or miamicityballet.org

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