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Having Produced and Premiered Tanowitz’s Immensely Acclaimed Four Quartets, Bard Fisher Center Will Commission Three New Works by the Choreographer, Including a Collaboration with Sara Mearns, and Will Develop a Digital Archive of Her Body of Work

Bard Fisher Center announced today that it has selected Pam Tanowitz as its first Choreographer in Residence. Her residency is underwritten by a $1.2 million gift from dance philanthropists Jay Franke and David Herro. The appointment follows the success of Tanowitz’s Four Quartets, which was produced by and premiered at the Fisher Center last summer. The New York Times hailed the production as “the most sublime dance-theater creation this century: a dance for the soul.” 

In an era when many contemporary choreographers are working on an independent basis outside of traditional dance company structures, the Franke/Herro grant provides stability, generous funding, and optimal working conditions to Tanowitz and her collaborators. The three-year residency, which begins this month and concludes in December 2021, includes salaries and benefits for Tanowitz and select collaborators, administrative and touring support, rehearsal space, and professional development. In committing its space and staff resources to this full-service residency for three years, the Center is reimagining how it might support the creation of large-scale and ambitious art on a college campus, and piloting a development and research model that it hopes will prove scalable and replicable elsewhere in the field of American dance.

Bard Fisher Center will commission three new Tanowitz dances, beginning with a new work created in collaboration with New York City Ballet principal dancer Sara Mearns. Tanowitz’s second work, which she envisions as the concluding part of a trilogy that began with New Work for Goldberg Variations and Four Quartets, will premiere in the Center’s 2021 SummerScape Festival. The third commissioned work will be Tanowitz’s first performance to be sited in a museum or gallery space.

A major component of the residency will be the development of a digital archive of Tanowitz’s oeuvre, including the remounting and documentation of several of her performances. These archival initiatives will make her body of work more widely accessible to dance scholars, students, and the general public.

Finally, Tanowitz and her collaborators will engage broadly with Bard’s undergraduate programs through teaching, showings and performances, student access to rehearsals, and campuswide dialogue about the creative process.

As a creative research institution embedded on the campus of a premiere liberal arts college, the Fisher Center endeavors to pioneer a new and future-facing model of partnership between independent artists and arts organizations, on university campuses and beyond. In recent years the Center has created extended residencies for such artists as Sarah Michelson, Justin Vivian Bond, Will Rawls, Tania El Khoury, and Daniel Fish. Often this commitment includes a high level of production, financial, and administrative support for the artists. These efforts reflect the Fisher Center’s commitment to providing extended support for leading artists by shepherding projects from their initial development to their premiere, and beyond through management of the project’s touring, field advocacy, and career development for the artist.

Through this first-time gift to the Bard, Jay Franke and David Herro’s visionary leadership allows the Fisher Center to realize its commitment to new models of support at an unprecedented level. Gideon Lester, the Fisher Center’s Artistic Director for Theater and Dance, noted: “Pam Tanowitz’s appointment as Choreographer in Residence is a remarkable intervention in her creative life. The infrastructural and producing support she will receive at the Center will allow her the time and resources to develop her most ambitious productions, and the Fisher Center is reimagining its own practices as a site for the documentation, archiving, study, teaching, and dissemination of her choreographic work. Pam is one of our country’s greatest contemporary artists, who has already changed the landscape of American dance. Her choreographic works combine formal sophistication and invention, a curiosity about the possibilities of the body in motion, intellectual rigor, philosophical inquiry, a deep awareness of dance history that paradoxically points to the future, and staggering beauty. It’s thrilling to welcome her to the Fisher Center as a colleague, and to deepen our creative partnership over the next three years.”

In making the grant, Jay Franke said: “We are honored to make this gift in support of Pam’s voice, and to help elevate her work to new heights with the Fisher Center. It’s so exciting when an idea as bold and courageous as this program makes its way to the dance field. We hope our support inspires other major gifts that will create new possibilities for other American choreographers.”

“We are grateful for Jay and David’s inspired philanthropy, which demonstrates their long-term commitment to supporting transformative change in the field of dance” stated Bob Bursey, the Fisher Center’s Executive Director. “We look forward to deepening our relationship with Pam, which began with a commission and presentation in 2015, and continued with the three-year development of Four Quartets. We hope to demonstrate the possibilities for arts centers to work creatively with artists to address the evermore pressing challenges they face.”

In beginning her residency, Pam Tanowitz said: “I’m blown away by the forward-thinking minds of Jay Franke, David Herro, and the leaders of Bard Fisher Center. With this generous and unprecedented support, the company can continue our momentum after the success of Four Quartets. Simply put—it will give me the freedom to keep going.”

High-resolution images of Pam Tanowitz are available here. High-resolution images of Four Quartets are available here.

About Bard Fisher Center
Bard Fisher Center develops, produces, and presents performing arts across disciplines through new productions and context-rich programs. At once a premiere professional performing arts center and a hub for research and education, Bard Fisher Center supports artists, students, and audiences in the development and examination of artistic ideas and perspectives from the past, present, and future.

The organization’s home is the Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts, designed by Frank Gehry and located on the campus of Bard College in New York’s Hudson Valley. Bard Fisher Center offers outstanding programs to many communities, including the students and faculty of Bard, and audiences in the Hudson Valley, New York City, across the country, and around the world. Productions developed by the Fisher Center have been presented at venues including Lincoln Center, BAM, St. Ann’s Warehouse, Walker Arts Center, and Barbican (London). fishercenter.bard.edu

The Fisher Center illustrates Bard’s commitment to the performing arts as a cultural and educational necessity. Building on a 150-year history as a competitive and innovative undergraduate institution, Bard is committed to enriching culture, public life, and democratic discourse by training tomorrow's thought leaders. bard.edu

About Pam Tanowitz
Pam Tanowitz is a celebrated New York–based choreographer and collaborator known for her unflinchingly postmodern treatment of classical dance vocabulary. In 2000, she founded Pam Tanowitz Dance to explore dance making with a consistent community of dancers.

In 2016, Tanowitz was presented with the Juried Bessie Award for “using form and structure as a vehicle for challenging audiences to think, to feel, to experience movement; for pursuing her uniquely poetic and theatrical vision with astounding rigor and focus.” Other honors include an Outstanding Production Bessie award in 2009 for her dance Be In the Gray with Me, a Foundation for Contemporary Arts award in 2010, a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2011, the Hodder Fellowship from Princeton University in 2013–14, a fall 2016 fellowship at the Center for Ballet and the Arts at NYU, and named a 2016–17 City Center Choreography Fellow. Her work was selected by the New York Times Best of Dance series in 2013, 2014, 2015, 2017, and 2018.

When awarding Ms. Tanowitz the 2017 Baryshnikov Arts Center Cage Cunningham Fellowship, Mikhail Baryshnikov, the center’s artistic director, said in a statement that “her work is not an imitation of dance history, but is a distinct intellectual journey.” Her 2017 dance New Work for Goldberg Variations, created for her company in collaboration with pianist Simone Dinnerstein, was called a “rare achievement” (The New York Times). Her most recent work, the 2018 creation Four Quartets, inspired by T. S. Eliot’s literary masterpiece and set to music by Kaija Saariaho, was called "the greatest creation of dance theater so far this century” (The New York Times).

She has been commissioned by The Joyce Theater, The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Bard Fisher Center, Vail International Dance Festival, New York Live Arts, The Guggenheim Museum’s Works & Process series, Danspace Project, Lincoln Center Out of Doors, Chicago Dancing Festival, Baryshnikov Arts Center, Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival, Duke Performances, Peak Performances, FSU's Opening Nights Series, and the Institute for Contemporary Art/Boston.

Tanowitz has created or set work for City Center’s Fall for Dance Festival, The Juilliard School, Ballet Austin, New York Theater Ballet and Saint Louis Ballet; and has been a guest choreographer at Barnard College, Princeton University, Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University, Marymount Manhattan College and Purchase College.

Originally from New Rochelle, New York, Tanowitz holds degrees from The Ohio State University and Sarah Lawrence College, and is currently a visiting guest artist at Rutgers University. Upcoming commissions from Paul Taylor American Dance, The Graham Company, and The Kennedy Center’s Ballet Across America will expose new audiences to her work.
 

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Bard College announces the appointment of world-renowned composer, conductor, and artist Tan Dun as dean of the Bard College Conservatory of Music. As dean, Tan Dun will guide the Conservatory in fulfilling its mission of teaching young musicians both new music and music history, while deepening an understanding of its connection to history, art and culture, and society. He will also help to build the synergy between Eastern and Western studies at the Conservatory, including its recently founded US–China Music Institute.

“We are delighted that Tan Dun, a conductor, composer, and artist whose work bridges cultures and genres and embraces a wide definition of music, will lead Bard’s Conservatory of Music,” said Bard College President Leon Botstein.

“The language of music is universal and can connect all kinds of people from diverse cultures, languages, and with different dreams. I look forward to working with the students of Bard’s Conservatory of Music in imagining and reimagining their careers as artists and helping them become even more connected to our growing world and widening musical soundscape,” said Tan Dun.

Tan Dun will begin his tenure as dean of the Bard College Conservatory of Music on July 1, 2019.

About Tan Dun
Tan Dun has made an indelible mark on the world’s music scene with a creative repertoire that spans the boundaries of classical music, multimedia performance, and Eastern and Western traditions. Now living in New York City, Tan Dun was born and raised in a rural Hunan village in the People’s Republic of China where millennia-old shamanistic cultural traditions still survived before Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution took hold. Following the end of the Cultural Revolution, China reopened its Central Conservatory and Tan Dun was one of only 30 selected to attend among thousands of applicants. By the time he arrived in the United States in 1986 to pursue his Doctorate at Columbia University in musical arts, where he soon immersed himself in the music of John Cage and the New York downtown avant-garde scene, Tan Dun was already famous in China. In these past two decades, Tan Dun has transcended stylistic and cultural boundaries to become one of the world’s most famous and sought-after composers. He has created several new artistic formats, which—like opera—encompass sound, sight, narrative, and ritual. In addition to his contributions to the repertoire of opera and motion pictures scores, Tan’s new formats include: orchestral theater, which recontextualizes the orchestra and the concert-going experience; organic music, which explores new realms of sound through primal elements such as water, paper, and stone; and multimedia extravaganzas, which incorporate a variety of cutting-edge technologies.

A UNESCO Global Goodwill Ambassador and winner of today’s most prestigious honors—including the Grammy Award, Oscar/Academy Award, Grawemeyer Award, Bach Prize, Shostakovich Award, and most recently, Italy’s Golden Lion Award for Lifetime Achievement—Tan Dun makes music that is played throughout the world by leading orchestras in opera houses, at international festivals, and on radio and television. This past year, Tan Dun conducted the grand opening celebration of Disneyland Shanghai, which was broadcast to a record-breaking audience worldwide.

As a conductor of innovative programs around the world, Tan Dun has led the China tours of the Mahler Chamber Orchestra and Japan’s NHK Symphony Orchestra. His current season includes leading the Orchestre National de Lyon in a five-city China tour, the Guangzhou Symphony Orchestra in a four-city tour of Switzerland and Belgium, as well as engagements with the Rai National Symphony Orchestra in Italy, Oslo Philharmonic, Orchestre National de France, and Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, where he was recently named artistic ambassador. Tan Dun currently serves as the honorary artistic director of the China National Symphony Orchestra. Next season, he will conduct the English Chamber Orchestra in their tour to China. Tan Dun has led the world’s most esteemed orchestras, including the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, London Symphony Orchestra, Philadelphia Orchestra, Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Orchestre National de France, BBC Symphony Orchestra, Filarmonica della Scala, Münchner Philharmoniker, Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, and Sydney Symphony Orchestra, among others.

Tan Dun’s individual voice has been heard widely by international audiences. His first Internet Symphony, which was commissioned by Google/YouTube, has reached over 23 million people online. His Organic Music Trilogy of Water, Paper, and Ceramic has frequented major concert halls and festivals. Paper Concerto was premiered with the Los Angeles Philharmonic at the opening of the Walt Disney Hall. His multimedia work The Map, premiered by YoYo Ma and the Boston Symphony Orchestra, has toured more than 30 countries worldwide. Its manuscript has been collected by the Carnegie Hall Composers Gallery. His Orchestral Theatre IV: The Gate was premiered by Japan’s NHK Symphony Orchestra and crosses the cultural boundaries of Peking Opera, Western Opera and puppet theatre traditions. Other important premieres include Four Secret Roads of Marco Polo for the Berlin Philharmonic, and Piano Concerto “The Fire” for Lang Lang and the New York Philharmonic. In recent years, his percussion concerto, The Tears of Nature, for soloist Martin Grubinger premiered in 2012 with the NDR Symphony Orchestra and Nu Shu: The Secret Songs of Women Symphony for 13 Microfilms, Harp and Orchestra was co-commissioned by the Philadelphia Orchestra, NHK Symphony Orchestra, and Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra Amsterdam. Most recently, Tan Dun conducted the premiere of his new oratorio epic Buddha Passion at the Dresden Festival with the Münchner Philharmoniker; the piece was co-commissioned by the New York Philharmonic, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, and the Dresden Festival and will go on to have performances in Melbourne, Hong Kong, Los Angeles, Hamburg, Singapore, and London in  coming seasons.

For Tan Dun the marriage of composition and inspiration has always culminated in his operatic creations. Marco Polo was commissioned by the Edinburgh Festival and has had four different productions, including, most prominently, with De Nederlandse Opera, directed by Pierre Audi; The First Emperor, with Placido Domingo in the title role, commissioned by the Metropolitan Opera of New York; Tea: A Mirror of Soul, premiered at Japan’s Suntory Hall, has since had new productions with Opera de Lyon, a co-production by Santa Fe Opera and the Opera Company of Philadelphia; and Peony Pavilion, directed by Peter Sellars, which has had over 50 performances at major festivals in Vienna, Paris, London, and Rome.

As a visual artist, Tan Dun’s work has been featured at the opening of the China Pavilion at the 56th Venice Art Biennale. Other solo exhibitions include New York’s Guggenheim Museum and Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), Beijing’s Chambers Fine Art Gallery, and the Shanghai Gallery of Art. Most recently, Tan Dun conducted the Juilliard Orchestra in the world premiere of his Symphony of Colors: Terracotta for the opening of New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art’s epic exhibition The Age of Empires. 

Tan Dun holds a master’s in composition from the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing and a doctorate from New York’s Columbia University in Musical Arts.
 
Tan Dun records for Sony Classical, Deutsche Grammophon, EMI, Opus Arte, BIS, and Naxos. His recordings have garnered many accolades, including a Grammy Award (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon) and nominations (The First Emperor; Marco Polo; Pipa Concerto), Japan’s Recording Academy Award for Best Contemporary Music CD (Water Passion after St. Matthew), and the BBC’s Best Orchestral Album (Death and Fire).
 

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