'It's massive, it's hard, I don't understand it!' TS Eliot dance show hits UK

As her acclaimed take on Four Quartets heads to London, choreographer Pam Tanowitz explains why she’s still trying to crack the poem

Her choreography has been hailed by the New York Times as some of the greatest dance being made in the world. And yet her creations have never been performed outside the US until now. Next month, Pam Tanowitz’s Four Quartets will receive its UK premiere at London’s Barbican.

It is the first time the TS Eliot estate has granted permission for the poet’s last great work to be used in a dance production. Tanowitz had been carrying lines from it in her head for a decade before Gideon Lester, artistic director at Bard College, New York, commissioned her to choreograph a piece to mark the 75th anniversary of the first publication of the Four Quartets last summer.

The production was two years in the making, but Tanowitz has still not cracked all of the poem’s secrets. “It’s massive, it’s hard, it’s abstract. I still don’t understand the poem,” she says. “I don’t think you would ever understand it. It’s the kind of thing where you pick it up in a different headspace, age, or whatever’s going on in your life, and you get different things from it.”

Four Quartets is at the Barbican, London, 22-25 May.

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