Curator: Ximena Caminos
Faena Art Center Buenos Aires presented Once with me (Preview), a new immersive and site-sensitive, cross-disciplinary choreography by Pam Tanowitz in collaboration with Sho Shigematsu, of the Pritzker Prize-winning architectural firm OMA; the Argentine fashion designer Jessica Trosman; composer Dan Siegler and Lighting Designer Davison Scandrett. Featuring Melissa Toogood and Dylan Crossman from Pam Tanowitz Dance in addition to dancers from the Contemporary Dance Workshop of Teatro San Martín, Tanowitz’s choreography was in direct dialogue with Faena Art Center Buenos Aires. In preparation for the performances, the company also participated in a five-day creative residency from March 19 to 24, 2016. Both the residency and performances in Buenos Aires were part of Faena Art’s commissioning support for a fall 2016 world premiere performance by Tanowitz that inaugurated Faena Art’s new Miami home, Faena Forum designed by Rem Koolhaas/OMA. The site-sensitive commission setted the tone for the many cultural practitioners and the diverse public that will come through the Forum’s doors, and featured dancers from Tanowitz’s Company as well as students from Miami City Ballet. As a celebration of the architecture, the performance highlighted the flexible features of the building activating and breathing life into this new space.
Over the past decade, choreographer Pam Tanowitz has created a body of work that fuses ballet with classic modern dance, creating abstract movement that challenges stylistic expectations, as well as conventions of composition and the concert-going experience. She is a Bessie Award-winning choreographer who has become known for her unflinchingly post-modern treatment of classical dance vocabulary. Tanowitz’ mission has been to revitalize abstraction and formalism by obliterating most of their self-imposed dialectical boundaries, and stretching the material into uncharted territory. Pam Tanowitz Dance was founded as a platform for Tanowitz to explore her vision with a consistent group of dancers. Since then the company has enjoyed continued success, winning commissions and residencies at prestigious performance venues such as The Joyce Theater, New York Live Arts, The Kitchen, Dance Theater Workshop, Danspace Project Joyce SoHo, The Guggenheim Museum’s Works & Process program and Baryshnikov Arts Center. Tanowitz received a 2009 Bessie Award for the dance, Be in the Gray With Me, at Dance Theater Workshop. She was awarded a prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship in 2011 and a Hodder Fellowship from Princeton University in 2013. Additional awards include Jerome Robbins Foundation, NYFA BUILD, for Contemporary Arts, Grants to Artists Award.