Pam Tanowitz's 'Messengers' Finds Its Place at Paul Taylor

Pam Tanowitz premiered her second work for the Paul Taylor Dance Company, "Messengers, Maidens and the End of Something Else," at the David H. Koch Theater on Sunday, as part of the company's fall season. The program returns on Nov. 14 and 20.

The New York premiere extends a run of assignments that place Tanowitz among the few 21st-century choreographers who consistently succeed at the trickiest job in dance: making new work for legacy troupes built by dead titans. New York City Ballet, Martha Graham Dance Company, the Paul Taylor Dance Company and Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater all survive their founders. Choreographers hired to refresh these institutions must fit in with the greats, stand up to them and still sound like themselves. According to the review, no one is meeting that challenge better than Tanowitz.

What is the new work actually about?

The title's "messengers and maidens" refers to the music: the first and last movements of Schubert's String Quartet No. 14 in D minor, known as "Death and the Maiden" because it draws on that Schubert song. Clear narrative should not be expected. The "something else" of the title, Tanowitz said at a Works & Process showing, is an unrelated, unproduced piece not intended to be recognized. The dance works by its own obscure logic.

Like Schubert, Tanowitz reuses older material. "Messengers" feels related to her "Pastoral" (2025), partly because it shares collaborators.

Who made it, and what does it look like?

The creative team behind the premiere includes:

• Costumes: Harriet Jung and Reid Bartelme, giving each of the eight dancers an individual color range
• Set: Sarah Crowner, whose curtains in the wings match each dancer's shade spectrum
• Sculpture: Crowner's movable red ballet barre, conceived in squiggly lines so that it somewhat resembles a pony with its tail in the air
• Lighting: Brandon Stirling Baker

Tanowitz and Crowner have said the barre was inspired by the one the painter Alex Katz made for Taylor's "Sunset." Knowing that, Taylor fans might notice echoes of the watching-the-girls-go-by action of "Sunset." Some hopping over prone bodies may connect to a famous passage in Taylor's "Esplanade."

How do these collaborators differ from Taylor and Katz?

Tanowitz and Crowner appear to respond to a broader climate of inspiration, like the long collaboration between Taylor and Katz. Where Taylor and Katz were sometimes fruitfully antagonistic, the artists behind "Messengers" — Tanowitz, Crowner, Jung, Bartelme and Baker — are more complementary. They all seem to be on the same page, creating it together.

The work acknowledges its Taylor context in subtle ways while weaving itself into Tanowitz's own choreographic history. What does this change for legacy companies? It suggests that a living choreographer can honor an institutional repertoire without dissolving into it, and the Nov. 14 and 20 performances give audiences two more chances to judge the result.