Pam Tanowitz and the Pastoral: Artists in Conversation

Join us on Wednesday, October 14, at 5:30 pm for a discussion with acclaimed choreographer Pam Tanowitz, Skidmore’s 2026 McCormack Visiting Artist‑Scholar in Residence, about her full-length dance work Pastoral. Alongside two of her collaborators, artist Sarah Crowner and artistic director Gideon Lester, Tanowitz will provide a look into the creative process that shaped this piece. April Bernard will join the panel discussion, which will be moderated by Brian Lawson. Pastoral, which features a score by composer Caroline Shaw, premiered in the summer of 2025 at Bard College and used Beethoven’s 6th Symphony as a springboard for multidisciplinary creation.

This event is part of Tanowitz’s 2026 McCormack Endowed Visiting Artist‑Scholar Residency at Skidmore and is free and open to the public.

About the participants:
- Pam Tanowitz: A New York–based choreographer and founder of Pam Tanowitz Dance. She has developed a distinct dance language through decades of research and creation. She is the first-ever choreographer in residence at the Fisher Center at Bard and an assistant professor of professional practice at Mason Gross School of the Arts, Rutgers University. Honors include the Jacob’s Pillow Dance Award, LMCC Liberty Award for Artistic Leadership, Doris Duke Artist Award, Herb Alpert Award, BAC Cage Cunningham Fellowship, and Bessie Awards. She has created works for companies including The Australian Ballet, New York City Ballet, Martha Graham Dance Company, Paul Taylor American Modern Dance, The Royal Ballet, Kennedy Center’s Ballet Across America, Vail Dance Festival, Juilliard Dance, Ballet Austin, and New York Theatre Ballet.

• Sarah Crowner: A Brooklyn‑based artist whose practice explores where geometry meets gesture, materiality merges with composition, and the graphic confronts the handmade. Her work spans painting, sculpture, installation, and set design and is held in collections such as the Art Institute of Chicago; Carnegie Museum of Art; The Contemporary Austin; Dallas Museum of Art; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum; and MoMA, New York. Recent exhibitions and installations include Faire Foyer: Sarah Crowner in Dialogue with Etel Adnan at The Bass Museum, Miami (2025–26); Platform as Platform at SCAD Museum of Art (2025); and Around Orange at Pulitzer Arts Foundation (2023–24).

• Gideon Lester: Artistic Director and Chief Executive of the Fisher Center at Bard and Senior Curator at the Open Society University Network’s Center for the Arts and Human Rights. A Tony- and Olivier Award–winning creative producer, festival director, and dramaturg, he has collaborated with and commissioned artists across disciplines and has produced projects such as the world premiere of Justin Peck and Sufjan Stevens’s Illinoise; Common Ground, an international festival on the politics of land and food; Daniel Fish’s Oklahoma!; and Pam Tanowitz’s Four Quartets and Song of Songs.

• April Bernard: Author of The World Behind the World (W. W. Norton, 2023) and previous collections including Brawl & Jag, Romanticism, Swan Electric, Psalms, and Blackbird Bye Bye (winner of the Walt Whitman Award). Her novel Miss Fuller was shortlisted for the International Dublin Literary Award. She teaches at Skidmore College and is at work on a volume of new and selected poems.

• Brian Lawson: Assistant Professor of Dance at Skidmore College, a dance performer and educator. He graduated summa cum laude with a BFA in dance performance from SUNY Purchase (2010), performed with Pam Tanowitz Dance, and joined the Mark Morris Dance Group in 2011. He earned an MFA in Dance from the University of Washington (2020) and began teaching at Skidmore in 2022. His choreographic research focuses on queerness in concert dance and contemporary balletic practices, and he continues to perform with Pam Tanowitz Dance and MMDG.

About the McCormack Endowed Visiting Artist‑Scholar Residency:
The residency brings internationally recognized artists and scholars to Skidmore College for an intensive, week-long, immersion experience embedded in the academic and creative life of the College. It emphasizes experiential learning, close faculty-student collaboration, and interdisciplinary exploration, and is presented by Skidmore’s Office of Special Programs in partnership with the Dance Department for the 2026 residency.