Pastoral at the Barbican: When Movement Meets Sound, Silence and Colour

At the heart of Pastoral is a specially commissioned score that responds to and transforms Beethoven’s Symphony No. 6 in F major (the “Pastoral” Symphony). Rather than treating the original as a fixed monument, Tanowitz and Shaw approach it as living material—something to be listened to again, felt again, and reimagined through the body. The result is a work that doesn’t simply “reinterpret” Beethoven, but converses with him: attentive to mood and atmosphere, alert to the emotional weather of the music, and unafraid to let the present day show through.

Performed by an ensemble of seven dancers and three live musicians, Pastoral showcases Tanowitz’s distinctive choreographic language—rigorously balletic, yet unmistakably contemporary. Over more than thirty years of experimentation, Tanowitz has developed a movement style that can feel both precise and expansive: classical technique sharpened into something modern, restless and searching. In Pastoral, that sensibility becomes a kind of lens, bringing Beethoven’s pastoral imagery into focus through shifting patterns, clean lines, and moments of unexpected softness.

Shaw’s composition, meanwhile, refracts and reimagines Beethoven’s original score, allowing familiar gestures to appear in new light. Crucially, it also makes space for what music often tries to outrun: silence. These pauses aren’t empty; they carry the aural truth of lived experience—breath, distance, anticipation, the way the world sounds when the “song” stops. In a piece inspired by nature, that attention to silence feels especially resonant: a reminder that landscapes are not constant crescendos, but a balance of presence and stillness.

Visually, Pastoral is shaped by Sarah Crowner’s décor design, drawing on her abstract cut-and-stitch painting canvases to create a shifting stage environment. Described as a landscape in magnificent jewel colours, the design doesn’t illustrate nature so much as evoke it—through texture, boldness, and the sense of a world continuously rearranging itself. As movement and music unfold, colour becomes another kind of score: a visual rhythm that deepens the work’s emotional temperature.

For Barbican audiences, Pastoral also marks a significant return. Following the success of Tanowitz’s previous visits—Four Quartets (2019) and Song of Songs (2023)—this new production continues her ongoing series of major performances that respond to masterworks of the past. Co-commissioned by the Barbican and premiered at the Fisher Center at Bard College, New York, in summer 2025, Pastoral arrived to critical acclaim, with The New York Times calling it “fresh and delightfully unpredictable… Pastoral was not a place I wanted to leave.”

Toni Racklin, Barbican Head of Theatre & Dance, describes the production as emblematic of the kind of ambitious, layered collaboration the Barbican champions. “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,” Racklin says. “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.”

The UK premiere is also complemented by a wider music programme celebrating Caroline Shaw, who is the Barbican’s Composer in Focus this autumn—an invitation to step further into her sonic world beyond Pastoral itself.