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‘Tis the Seasons

Last week I caught up with choreographer Pam Tanowitz and Opera Philadelphia’s current general director and president, countertenor Anthony Roth Costanzo to talk about “The Seasons,” the company’s latest production premiering at the Kimmel Center’s 600-plus seat Perelman Theater on December 19. But the first rehearsal with Tanowitz and dancers of her company began at the Suzanne Roberts Theater a few blocks down from the Kimmel.

Maile Okamura (front) and members of Pam Tanowitz Dance in “The Seasons.” Photograph by Nile Scott Studio

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‘Tis the season, so I brought some of my homemade cookies. Tanowitz sampled one, but as I placed the tin back in the bag, it tipped over. Costanzo jumped up. “I know how to fix that,” he said, gleefully swooping in and expertly flipping the tin upright. Half a Maple Pecan Shortbread slipped out, which he promptly ate. No surprise to me. I first saw him perform in Christopher Williams’ “Wolf in Skins” in 2013, and each time we’ve met, his buoyant character impresses me.

His enthusiasm has reintroduced Philadelphians to the “the Opera.” He devised “Opera, Deconstructed,” a summer performance series at the Rodin Garden Bar drawing throngs of people from across the region. His “Pipe Up Philadelphia” series helped salvage the historically renowned Wanamaker atrium, home to the world’s largest fully functioning organ, now a performance space drawing packed houses.

Meanwhile, he’s performed non-stop. Among other appearances, “Galas,” his acclaimed take on Maria Callas, took place in September at Manhattan’s Little Island. In his first ten weeks as OP’s director he raised seven million dollars and ended the year with a two million dollar surplus. He took the company from nine performances of three operas annually to 18 performances of five, luring new audiences for sellout runs with tickets offered as low as $11.

So how is Costanzo managing this while living in New York? “Oh no, I moved to Philly. I do keep my place in New York, but I’m a Philly Boy now.”

Tanowitz, taking this in, asks where Camden is and the Philly tawk segues for a few moments into our restaurant scene—he tells her he’s got them a res at Kalaya. I assure her she doesn’t need to know—just go.

“But will I have time to do some shopping between rehearsal and dinner?” Tanowitz queries. Costanzo and I tell her she’s near Walnut Street, with some of the best shopping in the country. She asks “Is this a part of the interview?” Of course, I say, it’s the holidays. But then we finally get into the genesis of the show. 

Anthony Roth Costanzo as the Poet in “The Seasons.” Photograph by Nile Scott Studio

Costanzo is a co-creator of this production with its librettist, the playwright Sarah Ruhl, well known in Philly for her productions at the Wilma Theater. He says, “I had this Idea. There are so many amazing Vivaldi arias, but the operas themselves are kind of tedious, so I wanted to make this music speak in new ways, but I’d always wanted dance to function like recitativ, to be able to tell the story.”

“Sarah and I talked about how Vivaldi’s relationship to the weather was so emotional, rather than just intellectual. And in our world, with climate change, how do we make connections to that?” 

Ruhl’s libretto evolved into a world in which the seasons are completely out of order due to climate change and how a commune of artist’s adapt to it, with Costanzo in the lead, singing the Poet.

 But how did Tanowitz enter this collaboration?

“I had been a big fan of Pam’s work. I saw her ‘Four Quartets’ at BAM. And I asked her to have lunch, about three or four years ago. We didn’t know each other, and she loved the idea of the project. I told her that we would take pieces of ‘The Four Seasons’ and mix them out of order. She had rehearsal later that day. But she literally texted me four hours later with a video in which she choreographed Vivaldi,” they both said, laughing.

Tanowitz has briefly worked in Philly before. In 2022, the Philadelphia Museum of Art commissioned her to create a dance for the inauguration of the Williams Forum. Site of the awe-inspiring cantilevered staircase, by the late Frank Gehry, Tanowitz took inspiration from Duchamp’s Nude Descending a Staircase, with a mesmerizing solo for Melissa Toogood, descending in sneakers, only to end with an erotic paean to Duchamp’s Étant donnés. But “The Seasons” will give Philly audiences a broader view of this in-demand choreographer.

Ashley Emerson as the Farmer and Anthony Roth Costanzo as the Poet in “The Seasons.” Photograph by Nile Scott Studio

Costanzo went on to say, “Pam is one of the greatest choreographers of our generation.” Indeed, the New York Times said her 2018 work, the T. S. Eliot inspired “Four Quartets,” was “the greatest creation of dance theater so far this century.” 

“Pam brings in a formal rigor, but also a kind of everyday connection to the body.”

“And for me,” Tanowitz said, “this is the first time I’ve ever done an opera, so I was excited about working with Anthony and Zack [Winokur, director] and Sarah. They were all letting me be me, but at the same time, I’m supporting the story. They were always interested in what I could add, not exactly serving a literal interpretation, but to expand the interpretation. Sometimes the dance is the weather. Sometimes the dancers serve as doppelgängers for the singers. Or sometimes it’s a compositional approach. So the dancers are treated in different and surprising ways throughout the opera.” 

They both appreciate Winokur’s direction and his deep understanding of how the dance should work. “It’s like he’s sewing it all together,” Tanowitz says. “I kind of love being in this project where I’m not the boss. It can be lonely when you’re the only one out front. This collaboration is like a conversation.”

Costanzo asserts the dance is much more integrated than in Carmen or Aida where you come in and do your pas de deux. Of working with Vivaldi, Tanowitz says, “I was scared at first because it is so iconic. But even though it’s been done a million times you can have that historical conversation, and reframe it.”

I’ve seen Costanzo move marvelously in several productions. So does she have choreography that includes him?

They laugh about just having worked together at Paris’s Palais Garnier where the dancers interpreted Tanowitz’s choreography. “He’ll just start imitating the dancers. I don’t even have to do anything. Throughout [“The Seasons”] he’ll interact with the dancers, they’ll do different kinds of weightbearing, pairing and gestures.”

Characters run from a raging fire in “The Seasons.” Photograph by Nile Scott Studios

Another reason Costanzo wanted Tanowitz’s choreography, “If the dance is too on the beat, it becomes trite.”

“Or,” Tanowitz adds, “it can look like you’re making fun of it.”

“Pam captures the feel of the piece very well. There are things that are lyrical and things that are wry.”

“Yes,” Tanowitz agrees, “it’s funny and sad.”

“This is my first time as general director singing and producing a show. It’s great to be with the orchestra. You know I negotiated the union contract. And several days ago I came in just in my capacity as a general director and Corrado (Rovaris, the company’s longtime conductor) asked me to sing one of the arias, so we did. And at the break he tears in his eyes and I said what is it. He said, Where else, where else in the world do you have a violist who’s the head of the union, the conductor, the general director all making music together?”

Tanowitz says, “And making art. I’m gonna cry.”  

In just a few minutes of rehearsal, I begin to see how they’ve crumbled this Vivaldi cookie. Tanowitz’s dancers do sudden unanticipated moves from petit sautées to abrupt 180 turns. They remind me of the little house wrens I watch out my window as they land on the weed trees next door, the frail branches bounding them lightly in the air. I can’t wait to see the full opera. It’s sold out, but there are always a few canceled tickets, so go to the box office at the last minute to see if you can catch it too.

Merilyn Jackson

Merilyn Jackson has written on dance for the Philadelphia Inquirer since 1996 and writes on dance, theater, food, travel and Eastern European culture and Latin American fiction for publications including the New York Times, the Warsaw Voice, the Arizona Republic, Phoenix New Times, MIT’s Technology Review, Arizona Highways, Dance Magazine, Pointe and Dance Teacher, and Broad Street Review. She also writes for tanz magazin and Ballet Review. She was awarded an NEA Critics Fellowship in 2005 to Duke University and a Pennsylvania Council on the Arts Fellowship for her novel-in-progress, Solitary Host.

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