Karole Armitage

Film director James Ivory created sets and costumes for an evening of her choreography that was performed in Italy's historic Teatro della Pergola, built in 1656.

Armitage's choreography can be divided into three distinct, aesthetic periods: punk, picture, and poetry"

Karole Armitage (born March 3, 1954) is an American dancer and choreographer currently based in New York City.

She is artistic director of Armitage Gone!

Dance, a contemporary dance company that performs several times annually in New York City as well as touring internationally.

Armitage began her professional career in 1973 as a member of the Ballet du Grand Théâtre de Genève in Switzerland.

The company, directed by George Balanchine and Patricia Neary, was rooted in the Balanchine aesthetic and devoted exclusively to his repertory.

There she performed many Balanchine masterworks including Agon, The Four Temperaments and Serenade.

In 1975 she became a Swiss citizen and holds dual citizenship with the US.

From 1976 to 1981 she was a member of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company performing leading roles across the globe.

In 1978, she created her first piece Ne, then followed by the iconic Drastic-Classicism in 1981.

She was dubbed the “punk ballerina” in the 1980s.

She earned a Tony nomination for her choreography of the Broadway musical Hair.

Born in Madison, Wisconsin, Armitage grew up dividing her time in two places: Gothic, Colorado, and Lawrence, Kansas.

Gothic was the site of the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory where her father, a biologist, did research.

Armitage began studying ballet in Lawrence, Kansas at the age of four with former New York City Ballet dancer Tomi Wortham, followed by classes in Crested Butte, Colorado with Shirley Strabhaur.

She then continued her studies with Ballet West in Aspen and Salt Lake City, at the School of American Ballet, the Harkness House in New York City, at North Carolina School of the Arts, and with Léonide Massine in London.

Throughout the 1980s, Armitage led her own company, which was based in New York City.

Her company toured internationally and was known for its collaborations with artists David Salle and Jeff Koons.

She created five ballets for the Ballet de l'Opéra National de Paris during the 1980s, leading to commissions in the US and Europe which she pursued throughout the 1990s.

In 1984, she was invited by Mikhail Baryshnikov to create a work for the American Ballet Theatre.

Three years later, Rudolph Nureyev commissioned one of her works for the Paris Opéra Ballet.

Armitage was named artistic director and choreographer of MaggioDanza (1995–1998) the ballet company at the Opera House in Florence, Italy, where she choreographed, curated and presented classical repertoire, modern masters and contemporary works.

She was named resident choreographer of the Ballet de Lorraine in Nancy, France, in 1999, where she remained until 2002, creating over 20 works for the company that toured throughout Europe.

In 2004, she served as the artistic director of the Venice Biennale International Festival of Contemporary Dance, inviting companies from across the globe to showcase innovative dance throughout the city including in the Arsenale where the Art Biennale is held every two years.

Returning to New York City after 15 years abroad, Armitage founded her current company, Armitage Gone!

Dance in 2004 as a way to create a culture with like-minded dancers exploring new ideas of what dance can do and be.

[3] It is administered by the Armitage Foundation a 501 (c) not- for-profit foundation based in New York City.

Armitage Gone!

Dance has a home at Mana Contemporary, which is based in a vast former tobacco warehouse.

Armitage is renowned for pushing boundaries to create works that blend dance, music, science, and art to engage in philosophical questions about the search for meaning.

Armitage movement looks spontaneous despite its rigorous craftsmanship.

Concepts such as “cubism in motion” are applied to group patterns, creating several vantage points so that movement is seen from multiple perspectives, angles, and levels, with planes bleeding into each other.

The steps are based on calligraphy and fractal geometry (that of clouds, mountains, seashores), creating a sinuous, curvilinear vocabulary unlike the Euclidean geometry of dance tradition.

The dancers share a common purpose but do not dance in unison, producing a funky, democratic individuality with lyricism punctuated by raw, visceral accents.

She is inspired by disparate, non-narrative sources, from 20th century physics, to 16th century Florentine fashion, to pop culture and new media.

In her hands, the classic vocabulary is given a needed shock to its system, with speed, fractured lines, abstractions and symmetry countermanded by asymmetry.

Music is her script and she has collaborated with contemporary and experimentalist composers such as John Luther Adams, Thomas Adès, Rhys Chatham, Vijay Iyer, and Lukas Ligeti.

The scores can be marked by extreme lyricism as well as dissonance, noise and polyrhythms The sets and costumes for her works are often designed by leading artists in the contemporary art world, including Karen Kilimnik, Jeff Koons, Vera Lutter, David Salle, Phillip Taaffe and Brice Marden.

She has also collaborated with fashion designers Christian Lacroix, Jean-Paul Gaultier, and Peter Speliopoulos with whom she has created many works.