Pam Tanowitz (Choreographer) is a critically acclaimed choreographer and founder of Pam Tanowitz Dance. Quick-witted and rigorous, the New York-based choreographer and collaborator has steadily delineated her own dance language through decades of research and creation. She is currently the first-ever choreographer in residence at the Fisher Center at Bard in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York. Other honors include a 2020 Doris Duke Artist Award, 2019 Herb Alpert Award, 2017 BAC Cage Cunningham Fellowship, 2016 and 2009 Bessie Awards, 2010 Foundation for Contemporary Arts Award, 2011 Guggenheim Fellowship, Hodder Fellowship, CBA Fellowship at New York University, and a New York City Center Choreography Fellowship. She has created for Australian Ballet, New York City Ballet, Martha Graham Dance Company, Paul Taylor American Modern Dance, the Royal Ballet, Singapore Dance Theatre, Kennedy Center’s Ballet Across America, Juilliard Dance, Ballet Austin, and New York Theatre Ballet. Originally from New Rochelle, New York, Tanowitz holds degrees from Ohio State University and Sarah Lawrence College, and is a visiting guest artist at Rutgers University.
Jessie Montgomery (Composer) is an acclaimed composer, violinist, and educator. She is the recipient of the Leonard Bernstein Award from the ASCAP Foundation, the Sphinx Medal of Excellence, and her works are performed frequently around the world by leading musicians and ensembles. Her music interweaves classical music with elements of vernacular music, improvisation, poetry, and social consciousness, making her an acute interpreter of 21st-century American sound and experience. Her profoundly felt works have been described as “turbulent, wildly colorful and exploding with life” (Washington Post). Montgomery’s growing body of work includes solo, chamber, vocal, and orchestral works. Some recent highlights include Five Freedom Songs (2021), a song cycle for soprano Julia Bullock and co-commissioned by Sun Valley Music Festival, Grand Teton Music Festival, Virginia Arts Festival, and the Boston, Kansas City, New Haven, and San Francisco symphony orchestras; Shift, Change, Turn (2019) commissioned by the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra and Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra; “Coincident Dances” (2018) for Chicago Sinfonietta; “Caught by the Wind” (2016) for the Albany Symphony and American Music Festival; and “Banner” (2014)—written to mark the 200th anniversary of “The Star-Spangled Banner”—for the Sphinx Organization and Joyce Foundation. Since 1999, Montgomery has been affiliated with the Sphinx Organization, which supports young African American and Latinx string players, and she has served as composer in residence for Sphinx Virtuosi, the Organization’s flagship professional touring ensemble. She is currently the Mead composer in residence with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.
big dog little dog is the mind-melding duo project of violinist/composer Jessie Montgomery and bassist/songwriter Eleonore Oppenheim. Their music has been described many ways, but perhaps the most apt so far has been “post-minimalist groove Americana.” The pair uses an improvisational composition technique that draws on many genres and their experience as native New Yorkers to create lush, cinematic soundscapes that are by turns sweeping and achingly intimate.
Pam Tanowitz Dance (PTD) unites critically acclaimed choreographer Pam Tanowitz with a company of world-class dance artists and renowned collaborators in all disciplines. As a choreographer, Tanowitz is known for her abstract treatment of classical and contemporary movement ideas. The work is deeply rooted in formal structures, manipulated and abstracted by Tanowitz until the viewer sees through to the heart of the dance. The juxtapositions and tensions that Tanowitz creates draws upon the virtuosic skill, musical dexterity, and artistic integrity of the PTD dancers. Since the company was founded in 2000, PTD has received commissions and/or residencies at Fisher Center at Bard’s SummerScape, Baryshnikov Arts Center, Chicago Dancing Festival, Danspace Project, Dance Theater Workshop, Guggenheim Museum’s Works & Process, Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival, the Joyce Theater, ICA Boston, Lincoln Center Out of Doors, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, MANCC, New York Live Arts, and Center for the Art of Performance at UCLA. Pam Tanowitz Dance was selected by the New York Times Best of Dance 2013–20.
Eleonore Oppenheim (Musician) is a genre-surfing musical polyglot. Her current projects include big dog little dog (a duo with composer/violinist Jessie Montgomery), an acoustic trio with art-pop auteur Glasser and multi-instrumentalist Robbie Lee, and the avant folk-jazz supergroup The Hands Free (with James Moore, Caroline Shaw, and Nathan Koci), among others. Oppenheim has an exciting repertoire of commissioned solo pieces and has also worked with established composers including Philip Glass, Steve Reich, and Meredith Monk, in composer-led ensembles like Missy Mazzoli’s “all-star, all-female” bandsemble Victoire, Florent Ghys’s low strings and drums powerhouse Bonjour, and with many other artists from the indie rock, jazz, and folk worlds. She writes and arranges for all of the aforementioned groups, and has established herself as a go-to chamber musician, soloist, recording artist, and large ensemble player. She enjoys working in the theater as well and spent the better part of 2019 and 2020 performing in Daniel Fish’s groundbreaking reimagining of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Oklahoma! off and on Broadway, as well as in the original production at Bard SummerScape in 2015.
Jeremy Jacob (Filmmaker) is a critically acclaimed and award-winning filmmaker and visual artist based in Brooklyn, New York. Working in a variety of mediums, Jacob examines desire, often obfuscated, through romantic and skeptical visions within the American Imaginary. In 2020, Jacob co-created Nowhere Apparent with the performance artist Jack Ferver in response to their research of the AIDS Oral History Project at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts; directed the virtual iteration of Netta Yerushalmy’s Paramodernities; created Talk Talk and Good Night for Works & Process at the Guggenheim; directed music videos for Chris Garneau’s album The Kind; and created the short film, David, for American Ballet Theatre with choreographer Pam Tanowitz. In 2021, Jacob and Tanowitz created everything is true (a memoir on film), for New York Public Library for the Performing Arts; and the short film Jack Jack with Ferver. Jacob’s work has also been presented by Bard College, Zuckerman Museum of Art, Cindy Rucker Gallery, Projekt722, Wexner Center for the Arts, Montserrat College of Art, New York Live Arts, and ALL ARTS.
Barbara Samuels (Lighting Design) (she/her) is a queer lighting designer, organizer, and producer residing on unceded Wappinger and Munsee-Lenape land. Samuels creates design-forward live events that prioritize generosity, equity, and representation. Working nationally and internationally, she collaboratively constructs intimate and explosive lighting environments for new plays, opera, and dance, aiming to unearth the human condition and consciousness of our surroundings. Previously at Bard SummerScape, Samuels designed the lighting for Acquanetta. She received Drama Desk and Lucille Lortel Award nominations for her lighting of the immersive sci-fi folk concert, Rags Parkland Sings the Songs of the Future, Ars Nova; and has designed for several Obie Award–winning plays including Dance Nation, Playwrights Horizons; Great Lakes…, New Georges/WP Theater; and Grimly Handsome, minor theater. From 2008 to 2012, Samuels served as the general manager of Obie Award–winning 13P. In 2016, in addition to being a Target Margin Theater Institute Fellow, the Interval named Samuels a Woman to Watch. She holds a BA from Fordham University and an MFA in lighting design from NYU. Proud member of USA Local 829. New Georges affiliated artist.
Reid Bartelme and Harriet Jung (Costume Design) met in 2009 while pursuing fashion design degrees at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York City. They started designing collaboratively in 2011 and have focused their practice primarily on costuming dance. In 2015, they were commissioned by the Museum of Arts and Design in New York City to develop a costume-centric performance work and have since devised two performances at the Guggenheim to shed light on collaborative practice in design and dance. Reid & Harriet Design has completed research fellowships at Center for Ballet and the Arts at NYU and the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts. They continue designing costumes and sets for dance productions around the world while expanding the scope of their practice outside the theater. This is the 20th work they have designed collaboratively for Pam Tanowitz. Reidandharriet.com
Cutting his teeth on the New York City new music scene since 2008, Garth MacAleavey (Sound Design) is a leader in high-fidelity classical/new music sound design and reinforcement. He specializes in hyperreal immersive surround sound, spatial audio mixing and transparent opera/orchestra amplification. MacAleavey is director of production and resident sound designer of Brooklyn’s National Sawdust. In partnership with Meyer Sound, he is an expert in constellation, space map systems, and continues to move the art of spatial sound forward on a daily basis. Recent credits include: Soldier Songs movie by David T. Little and Opera Philadelphia; Ellen Reid’s Pulitzer Prize– winning p r i s m, LA Opera/Prototype; New York Philharmonic’s Sound On: Leading Voices, Jazz at Lincoln Center; Ricky Ian Gordon’s Ellen West, Prototype; Ted Hearne’s In Your Mouth, Walker Art Center; Michael Gordon’s Aquanetta, Bard/Prototype; Nick Cave’s The Let Go, Park Avenue Armory Drill Hall; David T. Little’s Dog Days, LA Opera/Bielefeld Opera.
Betsy Ayer’s (Stage Management) previous Fisher Center/tour includes Four Quartets. Dance highlights consist of tours with Pam Tanowitz Dance, Trisha Brown Dance Company, FLEXN at the Park Avenue Armory/international tour, and New York City Ballet. Her opera experience includes Cunning Little Vixen, Le Grand Macabre, Pelleas et Melisande, Berlin Philharmonic and London Symphony Orchestra; St. Matthew Passion, Lincoln Center/Park Avenue Armory; Das Paradies und die Peri, The Gospel According to the Other Mary, Los Angeles Philharmonic; New York City Opera; Teatro Real, Madrid; La Passion de Simone (international tour), Vienna Festival; Santa Fe Opera; Glimmerglass Opera; and Brooklyn Academy of Music. Ayer’s theater work includes Lincoln Center Festival; Shockheaded Peter, Classic Stage Company; New York Theatre Workshop; and Manhattan Theatre Club. She has worked regionally with the Alabama Shakespeare Festival, and was the interim production manager for concerts at Carnegie Hall. She is a graduate of Smith College.
Emma Deane (Lighting Design) is an Indigenous (Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara Nation) lighting designer based out of New York City. Her recent credits include Mary Kathryn Nagle’s Manahatta at Yale Repertory Theatre and Jeremy O. Harris’s Yell: A “Documentary” of My Time Here. Other credits include Reykjavík, Trouble in Mind, shakespeare’s as u like it, and Romeo and Juliet (Yale School of Drama); Little Boy/Little Man, Burn Book, The Light Fantastic, Mud, The Guadalupes, Wolf/Alice, and Camille: A Tearjerker (Yale Cabaret); The Winter’s Tale (Shakespeare Academy at Stratford). Chicago credits include work with Court Theatre, the Goodman Theatre, Albany Park Theater Project, Steppenwolf Theatre Company, Northlight Theatre, Chicago Shakespeare Theater, Victory Gardens, House Theatre of Chicago, Filament Theatre, Interrobang Theatre Project, Akvavit Theatre, Wildclaw Theatre, North Park University, and the Gannon Center for Women and Leadership. She holds an MFA from Yale School of Drama and a BA in English from Loyola University Chicago. emmadeane.com
Daniel Rampulla (Cinematography) is a New York–based photographer and cinematographer born in San Francisco, California. He received a bachelor of fine arts in photography from San Francisco Art Institute and a master’s in art education from New York University. In 2020, Rampulla collaborated with Pam Tanowitz and Jeremy Jacob on David, a short film featuring David Halberg that premiered at American Ballet Theatre. His other film work includes Jacob and Netta Yerushalmy’s Dear Merce, Chris Garneau’s Not the Child, and Cole Escola and Todd Oldham’s Pee Pee Manor. Rampulla has had two solo photography exhibitions: Wild Place, Chart Gallery 2020; and Collapse, Kapp Kapp Gallery 2021. In 2019 he worked with fashion designer JW Anderson on their first zine and editorial short film.
Jason Collins (Creative Producer and Performer) is a dance artist and producer living in Brooklyn, New York. He has performed with Pam Tanowitz Dance (PTD) since 2013 and has assisted Tanowitz with creations for Dance Theater of Harlem, Miami City Ballet, New York City Ballet, and the Royal Ballet. He has also performed with Merce Cunningham Trust, the Bang Group, Crossman Dans(c)e, Ryan McNamara, and Danielle Russo, among others. In addition to his work as a performer, Collins began managing PTD in 2017 and became creative producer in 2019. He was an associate producer of works by Big Dance Theater and Pavel Zuštiak, and a project assistant with BAM’s DanceMotion USA from 2015 to 2017. He also is a co-founder of HEWMAN, a New York City–based dance collective. Collins studied at Walnut Hill School for the Arts and holds a BFA from Juilliard.
Melissa Toogood (Rehearsal Director and Performer) is a Bessie Award–winning performer. She is a dancer, rehearsal director, and artistic associate of Pam Tanowitz Dance. She has assisted Tanowitz on numerous creations including works for the Australian Ballet, Ballet Austin, Paul Taylor American Modern Dance, Martha Graham Dance Company, the Juilliard School, Fall for Dance Festival, Vail Dance Festival, and others. Toogood was a member of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, has taught Cunningham Technique internationally since 2007, and is a 2013 and 2015 Merce Cunningham Fellow. She teaches for and is an official stager for the Merce Cunningham Trust. Toogood has performed with Abraham.In.Motion, Kimberly Bartosik, Michelle Dorrance, Rosie Herrera Dance Theater, Rashaun Mitchell + Silas Riener, Stephen Petronio Dance Company, Sally Silvers, Christopher Williams, Bill Young, the Bang Group: Tap Lab, Michael Uthoff Dance Theater, and many others. Her own work has been commissioned by Boston Ballet and New York Theater Ballet. She is a native of Sydney, Australia, and holds a BFA in dance performance from New World School of the Arts, Miami, Florida.
Brittany Engel-Adams (Performer) is a dancer, choreographer, and teacher living in New York City. She graduated from University of the Arts with a master’s of fine arts in dance. She has worked with Yvonne Rainer, Okwui Okpokwasili, Emily Coates, Annie–B Parson, Pat Catterson, Donna Uchizono, Netta Yerushalmy, Ailey ll, and more. Engel-Adams performed across disciplines for projects like Sleep No More, immersive theater; The White Album, multimedia theater, directed by Lars Jan; 10019, site-specific performance, choreographed by Naomi Goldberg Haas. She is a costar in the HBO series Boardwalk Empire and is featured in the film Chiraq, directed by Spike Lee. Her choreographic work has been presented at Victoria J. Mastrobuono, Symphony Space, PS261, and Kumble Theater, made in collaboration with dancers from Rutgers University, Joffrey Ballet, and Brooklyn Ballet School. Most recently, Hand Dance, a dance film, commissioned by the Guggenheim’s Works & Process, premiered in November 2020, made in a collaboration between David Lang, Parson, and Ron Erlih. She teaches at NYU’s Tisch, and performs with Big Dance Theater. She has been dancing with Pam Tanowitz Dance since 2020.
Christine Flores (Performer) is originally from Toronto, Ontario, and graduated from New World School of the Arts, Miami, with a BFA in dance. She received additional training at Springboard Danse Montréal, the contemporary program at the School at Jacob’s Pillow, and Cunningham Fellowship workshops. Flores is based out of New York City, performing with Pam Tanowitz Dance, Company XIV, Danielle Russo Performance Project, NVA & Guests, and Shinsa Collective. She has previously worked with Hozier, Quinn XC11, Chelsea Cutler, Peter Chu, Caleb Teicher & Company, Crossman Dans(c)e, Emma Portner, the Chase Brock Experience, and Tania Pérez-Salas Company, Mexico. Recently named one of Dance Magazine’s 2021 25 to Watch, she has taught repertory workshops for Tanowitz at NYU Tisch and ADF Cleveland, as well as master classes across Canada and the United States.
Zachary Gonder (Performer) started dancing at the age of five at Dance Connection, a local studio in his hometown north of Chicago. He trained at the Chicago Academy for the Arts under the tutelage of renowned choreographer Randy Duncan. He graduated from Juilliard in 2018, and performed works there by Austin McCormick, José Limón, Aszure Barton, Pam Tanowitz, Richard Alston, Gustavo Ramirez Sansano, and Crystal Pite. Gonder has worked for BODYTRAFFIC in Los Angeles as well as the Barton Sisters’ Axis Connect program. Along with Pam Tanowitz Dance, he also works with Brian Brooks Moving Company and ZviDance.
Lindsey Jones (Performer) is a Brooklyn-based multidisciplinary artist. She has been dancing and working with Pam Tanowitz Dance since 2013, among other dance companies and projects. She works with plants as an herbalist and gardener.
Victor Lozano (Performer) has been a member of Pam Tanowitz Dance since 2016. He has also performed with Dance Heginbotham; Brian Brooks Dance; Madboots Dance; Merce Cunningham Trust, Night of 100 Solos, UCLA; Lar Lubovitch Dance Company, Artemis in Athens; Ryan McNamara, Boffo Fire Island Performance Festival; and Brendan Fernandes, Noguchi Museum. Lozano holds an MA in performance studies from New York University and a BFA in dance from Juilliard. He is a recipient of the Juilliard Career Advancement Fellowship (2016–18) and the Ann and Weston Hicks Choreography Fellowship (2019) at Jacob’s Pillow. He is originally from Houston, Texas.
Maile Okamura (Performer) studied classical ballet with Lynda Yourth in San Diego, California, and at San Francisco Ballet School before joining Boston Ballet II and Ballet Arizona. A curiosity in modern dance led her to New York City and the Mark Morris Dance Group, which was her artistic home for more than 20 years. Okamura has been dancing with Pam Tanowitz Dance since 2016. She also collaborates with choreographer John Heginbotham as costume designer and video editor. Additionally, she has designed/constructed costumes for Mark Morris Dance Group, Houston Ballet, Atlanta Ballet, and Tanglewood Music Festival. She is currently working on a video project, 24 Caprices, with Dance Heginbotham and violinist Colin Jacobsen.
Gabriel Cabezas (Musician) is a precise and passionate performer who is fast becoming one of his generation’s most sought-after soloists and collaborators. Cabezas imbues the pillar scores of the cello repertoire with the vivacity of newly written work, and performs world premieres with gravitas and command. His neoteric career spans solo appearances, chamber music, work with bands and songwriters, and curation. As a soloist, he has appeared with America’s finest symphony orchestras, including those of Philadelphia, Chicago, Cleveland, New York, and Los Angeles, and has premiered dozens of new works by some of the most brilliant composers of his time. Cabezas is a member of the chamber sextet yMusic, “six contemporary classical polymaths who playfully overstep the boundaries of musical genres” (New Yorker). Their virtuosic execution and unique configuration (string trio, flute, clarinet, and trumpet) has attracted the attention of high-profile collaborators—from Paul Simon to Bill T. Jones and Ben Folds—and inspired original works by some of today’s foremost composers, including Nico Muhly, Missy Mazzoli, and Andrew Norman. He is also a cofounder of Duende, a new music and contemporary dance collective that focuses on the interaction between musicians and dancers in the realization of new scores. He is currently working on an album of cello music by Gabriella Smith entitled Lost Coast, which was released on the Icelandic record label Bedroom Community in June of 2021.
Grammy-nominated violinist Jannina Norpoth (Musician) made her debut as a soloist with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra at age 14. Since then, she has built a career as an innovative collaborative artist with a passion for contemporary music, genre bending, and improvisation; a sought-after arranger and orchestrator; and an advocate for a more inclusive and versatile landscape in classical music. Her ensemble PUBLIQuartet, is widely recognized for its trailblazing programming and practice—receiving the 2019 Visionary Artist Award from Chamber Music America, and the 2015 CMA/ASCAP Award for Adventurous Programming. PUBLIQuartet has been an artist in residence at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and National Sawdust in New York City, and made headlines when it improvised a live soundtrack for the final presidential debate of 2016 on The Colbert Report. Norpoth has performed internationally, including appearances on Lincoln Center’s Great Performers series, Kennedy Center’s Arts Across America, Mostly Mozart Festival, Composers Now, Women of the World Festival at the Apollo Theater, Detroit Jazz Festival, Newport Jazz Festival, Ecstatic Music Festival, VH1’s Save the Music Foundation, and Saturday Night Live. She has been featured alongside acclaimed musicians James Carter, Nadia Sirota, Regina Carter, Marcus Belgrave, Jay-Z, Beyoncé, Pharrell Williams, Stevie Wonder, Anita Baker, My Brightest Diamond, and many others.
Nathan Schram (Musician) has been hailed by the New York Times as an “elegant soloist” with a sound “devotional with its liquid intensity.” He is a Grammy Award–winning composer, entrepreneur, and violist of the Attacca Quartet. Schram has collaborated with many of the great artists of today including Björk, James Blake, Sting, David Crosby, Becca Stevens, David Byrne, Trey Anastasio, Itzhak Perlman, Joshua Bell, Simon Rattle, and others. He is also a violist in the affiliate ensemble of Carnegie Hall, Decoda; and an honorary ambassador to the city of Chuncheon, South Korea. Apart from performing, Schram is founder and artistic director of Musicambia. Founded in 2013, Musicambia brings music learning and ensemble performance to prisons throughout the United States. Through working closely with incarcerated individuals on performance, songwriting, music theory, ear training, and composition, Musicambia’s professional musicians build artistic communities that nurture the humanity of all involved. Musicambia currently runs a music conservatory in Sing Sing Correctional Facility in Ossining, New York, with other programs throughout New York State and in Indiana, California, Kansas, and South Carolina.
