Born: 1969, United States (assumed)
Died: NA
Country most active: United States
Also known as: NA
The following is excerpted from Infinite Women founder Allison Tyra’s book The View from the Hill: Women Who Made Their Mark After 40.
In the late 2010s, Pam Tanowitz, on the cusp of 50, became “an instant hot property, but it was the kind of overnight success that comes only after quietly slogging it out on the New York dance scene for 25 years, making one show a year, while working a day job,” wrote The Guardian in 2023. Tanowitz had been choreographing since her college days, but spent years managing the same dance studios she would use for rehearsals, while also raising her daughter. “Looking back, not being noticed for 15 years was a gift,” she told Dance Magazine in 2021. “Once I realized my career path would not be that of the hot, young choreographer, I just blocked out the noise of who was getting what, and focused on making good dances.”
“I grew up in the ‘80s and it wasn’t in style to check children for learning disabilities,” she has said. “I have dyslexia, I have comprehension problems. They just put people in the lowest group. But I actually think that was how I got started because choreography to me is like doing a puzzle or being a detective. There’s part of my brain that wants to figure something out, and I don’t know if that would have been turned on otherwise. Maybe that was my way of trying to understand the world.”
Her 2018 work Four Quartets was lauded by The New York Times as possibly “the greatest creation of dance theater so far this century” and The Guardian as “Unfussy but full of detail … Where you can never predict what happens next but when it does it makes perfect sense.” Tanowitz identifies her 2017 New Work for Goldberg Variations—which The New York Times called a “rare achievement”—as the moment that “everyone woke up,” though even in success she was very aware “they might stop calling tomorrow,” she later said.
Even with her acclaimed pieces being staged, Tanowitz continued teaching—a choice many artists will understand. “People see my fancy commissions and they’re shocked that I have to teach. But that’s not enough money for my whole year,” she said in 2023. She has worked with New York City Ballet, Martha Graham Dance Company, Paul Taylor American Modern Dance, The Royal Ballet, The Kennedy Center’s Ballet Across America, Juilliard Dance, Ballet Austin, and New York Theatre Ballet, among other organizations.
Although her father died shortly after Four Quartets premiered and wasn’t able to see the production, “He said to me after he read (The New York Times review): ‘Wow, you really were a late bloomer!’” Tanowitz recalled. “So in the programme for Song of Songs, I dedicated the show to him, and then I wrote: ‘Also dedicated to all the late bloomers.’”