PASTORAL by Pam Tanowitz Dance to Make UK Premiere at the Barbican
The collaboration features music by Pulitzer Prize-winner Caroline Shaw and designs by Sarah Crowner.
Movement, sound, silence and colour come together in Pastoral (1–3 October), a new evocative contemporary dance performance by renowned choreographer Pam Tanowitz, with music by Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Caroline Shaw, inspired by Beethoven's depiction of the natural world.
Opening the Barbican's autumn/winter 2026 Theatre & Dance season, this major collaboration between Tanowitz, Shaw and award-winning visual artist Sarah Crowner, is set to a specially commissioned score that responds to and transforms Beethoven's Symphony No. 6 in F major (Pastoral).
Performed by an ensemble of seven dancers and three live musicians, Pastoral combines Tanowitz's unique choreographic language, both rigorously balletic and refreshingly rooted in the present day, shaped by over thirty years of experimentation.
Shaw's composition refracts and reimagines Beethoven's original score, incorporating moments of silence that reflect the aural experience of life, while Crowner's décor design draws on her abstract cut-and-stitch painting canvases, forming a shifting landscape in magnificent jewel colours.
Returning to the Barbican Theatre following the success of Four Quartets (2019) and Song of Songs (2023), Tanowitz continues her series of major performances that respond to masterworks of the past. Pastoral was co-commissioned by and premiered at the Fisher Center at Bard College, New York, in summer 2025 to critical acclaim (“Fresh and delightfully unpredictable… Pastoral was not a place I wanted to leave”, The New York Times). The UK premiere of this production is complemented by a music programme of Caroline Shaw's work, who is the Barbican's Composer In Focus this autumn.
Toni Racklin, Barbican Head of Theatre & Dance, says, “We are thrilled to welcome Pam Tanowitz Dance back to the Barbican with the UK premiere of Pastoral, which brings together three extraordinary artists in Pam Tanowitz, Caroline Shaw and Sarah Crowner. It is a striking example of the kind of ambitious collaboration we make space for at the Barbican, where choreographers, composers and visual artists come together to create bold and layered work. Tanowitz is a major voice in contemporary choreography, and it's a privilege to give audiences another opportunity to experience her distinctive reworkings of major classical and modern sources in performance, as this marks our third co-commission presenting her company of dancers in London.”
Pam Tanowitz, choreographer, says, “Toni and the Barbican went out on a limb in 2018, supporting my piece Four Quartets without knowing my work that well. Now, eight years later, we've developed a close collaboration. Returning for a third time to the Barbican, this time with one of my newest works Pastoral, is thrilling—it continues our history together and lets me share Pastoral with London audiences.”
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