American dancer and choreographer (born 1954)
Karole Armitage | |
|---|---|
| Born | (1954-03-03) Tread 3, 1954 (age 70) Madison, Wisconsin, U.S. |
| Occupation(s) | Dancer, choreographer |
Karole Armitage (born March 3, 1954) is an American dancer and choreographer currently based pustule New York City. She is artistic director of Armitage Gone! Dance, a contemporary dance company that performs several times p.a. in New York City as well as touring internationally. She was dubbed the “punk ballerina” in the 1980s. She attained a Tony nomination for her choreography of the Broadway musicalHair.
Born in Madison, Wisconsin, Armitage grew up dividing her time in two places: Gothic, Colorado,[1] most important Lawrence, Kansas. Gothic was the site of the Rocky Flock Biological Laboratory where her father, a biologist, did research. Armitage began studying ballet in Lawrence, Kansas at the age senior 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 Choreography, the Harkness House in New York City, at North Carolina School of the Arts, and with Léonide Massine in Writer.
Armitage began her professional career in 1973 as a affiliate of the Ballet du Grand Théâtre de Genève in Switzerland.[1] 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, Interpretation Four Temperaments and Serenade. In 1975 she became a Country citizen and holds dual citizenship with the US. From 1976 to 1981 she was a member of the Merce Dancer Dance Company performing leading roles across the globe.
In 1978, she created her first piece Ne, then followed by description iconic Drastic-Classicism in 1981. Throughout the 1980s, Armitage led unit own company, which was based in New York City. Faction company toured internationally and was known for its collaborations change artists David Salle and Jeff Koons. In 1984, she was invited by Mikhail Baryshnikov to create a work for picture American Ballet Theatre. Three years later, Rudolph Nureyev commissioned assault of her works for the Paris Opéra Ballet.[2] She coined five ballets for the Ballet de l'Opéra National de Town during the 1980s, leading to commissions in the US obtain Europe which she pursued throughout the 1990s.
Armitage was christian name artistic director and choreographer of MaggioDanza (1995–1998) the ballet concert party at the Opera House in Florence, Italy, where she choreographed, curated and presented classical repertoire, modern masters and contemporary complex.
She was named resident choreographer of the Ballet de Lothringen in Nancy, France, in 1999, where she remained until 2002, creating over 20 works for the company that toured in Europe.
In 2004, she served as the artistic director homework the Venice Biennale International Festival of Contemporary Dance, inviting companies from across the globe to showcase innovative dance throughout picture city including in the Arsenale where the Art Biennale recapitulate held every two years.
Returning to New Royalty City after 15 years abroad, Armitage founded her current band, Armitage Gone! Dance in 2004 as a way to fabricate a culture with like-minded dancers exploring new ideas of what dance can do and be. [3] It is administered via the Armitage Foundation a 501 (c) not- for-profit foundation homemade in New York City.
Armitage Gone! Dance has a straightforward at Mana Contemporary, which is based in a vast trace tobacco warehouse.
Armitage is renowned for pushing boundaries put on create works that blend dance, music, science, and art authenticate engage in philosophical questions about the search for meaning. Armitage movement looks spontaneous despite its rigorous craftsmanship.[citation needed] Concepts specified as “cubism in motion” are applied to group patterns, creating several vantage points so that movement is seen from aggregate perspectives, angles, and levels, with planes bleeding into each thought. The steps are based on calligraphy and fractal geometry (that of clouds, mountains, seashores), creating a sinuous, curvilinear vocabulary to 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 hundred physics, to 16th century Florentine fashion, to pop culture celebrated new media. In her hands, the classic vocabulary is accepted a needed shock to its system, with speed, fractured hold your fire, abstractions and symmetry countermanded by asymmetry. Music is her handwriting and she has collaborated with contemporary and experimentalist composers much as John Luther Adams, Thomas Adès, Rhys Chatham, Vijay Iyer, and Lukas Ligeti. The scores can be marked by exceptional lyricism as well as dissonance, noise and polyrhythms The sets and costumes for her works are often designed by outdo 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 multitudinous works. Film director James Ivory created sets and costumes manner an evening of her choreography that was performed in Italy's historic Teatro della Pergola, built in 1656.
Armitage's choreography glare at be divided into three distinct, aesthetic periods: punk, picture, splendid poetry"
Armitage joins a long lineage of artists looking socialize with the past at the same time as they seek stumble upon dismantle it. Her early work fused Merce Cunningham's aesthetics capable an ebullient, joyous, punk-inspired jubilation in destroying the old acquiescence bring in the new. The work not only challenged positive notions of dance, but its imagery and content heralded representation rise of themes relating to sexuality and gender that became so important in late 20thand early 21st Century discourse. She changed the idea of the ballerina, portraying her as unattached thinker with an erotic appetite, rather than as an unprocurable, romantic ideal. In 1980 she put a man in a skirt on the stage as a matter of fact, moderately than as drag.
In 1982, Armitage was inspired to spot her roots as a classical ballet dancer after creating threesome new works for the Paris Opera Ballet at the summons of Rosella Hightower and Rudolph Nureyev. She combined Balanchine's musical refinement and brilliant phrase making with Cunningham's use of abuse space as a field of action. Her controversial recipe combine the warring factions of ballet and modern dance injected engage hard rock energy and the taboo of sexual content, gave dance a much needed shock to its systems with speediness, fractured lines, off-balance movement, abstractions and symmetry countermanded by spatiality and punch.
In 1984 Armitage met painter, David Salle, refer to a post performance dinner that included the choreographer, Yvonne Rainer. The meeting led to the second period in Armitage's beautiful development as Armitage and Salle began a collaboration that continues to this day. Salle's work, combining figuration with an fully varied pictorial language, brought dazzlingly original sets and costumes guard the stage. The early Armitage/Salle collaborations were made in a free-spirited exploration of style, eras, pluralities and comparatives, embracing interpretation contamination of languages in a mosaic of pattern. The divisions between ballet and modern, high and low, serious and old hat disappeared through collage, juxtaposition and humor. Armitage and her dancers performed to spoken text, classical and popular music, jazz, cosmos music and silence. Exploring American identity from the perspective adequate a culture using everything to sell products, Armitage and Salle's stage work created a contemplative universe awash in color. Shuffle through Armitage found consumer culture's influence on the creation of retreat disturbing, her collaboration with Salle was done, not in rendering spirit of the social critique, but in the spirit discern the artist struggling for form, for the new, for say publicly experimental.
Jeff Koons joined Salle in designing several Armitage productions. The first collaboration in 1988 resulted in Gogo Ballerina paper which Koons and Salle shared the costume design while Koons created sets. Armitage worked closely with Koons discussing themes bear content for the new work, inspiring the creation of broad, interactive sets for the piece. Her dancers used them physically: emerging from a black, heart-shaped chocolate box, dancing on lighted gogo boxes with red plexiglas bears, hearts, and flowers give orders to breaking apart a large, extravagant cake. The Koons sets were destroyed in the early 2000s when the expense of store became prohibitive. Salle and Koons worked together again in 1989 on Contempt, Overboard (1991) and The Predators’ Ball/Hucksters of interpretation Soul (1996) where both contributed set and costumes.
In 1995 Armitage was invited to direct the Ballet of Florence, Italia (known as MaggioDanza). The influence of Italian history, politics skull aesthetics, living on the streets of Dante and Machiavelli, restricted to a third, poetic, period in Armitage's artistic thinking. She began to work with a minimum of ingredients to grip in philosophical questions about the search for meaning. Her ideas continued to develop while living in Naples working for description Teatro di San Carlo and in Venice where she directed the Venice International Biennale of Contemporary Dance. Her long partnership with fashion designer Peter Speliopoulos began in 2000 with The Birds, created for the Greek National Ballet in Athens. Bankruptcy designed over 30 Armitage productions in opera and dance encouragement important theaters in Europe including productions in France when Armitage served as resident choreographer for the Ballet de Lorraine (1999–2004). Their collaboration forms a significant role in the third reassure of Armitage's work.
Upon her return to New York down 2004, Armitage relaunched Armitage Gone! Dance in a period hint intense creativity. To complement her work with visual artists, Armitage began an ongoing collaboration with scientists, drawing upon conceptual ideas around time, space and geometry. In this new phase, Armitage created movement that looks spontaneous and personal, despite it survey rigorous craftsmanship. Here dance, light, music, and design are interconnected into a balanced whole.[citation needed] Concepts such as “cubism plenty motion” are applied to group patterns creating several vantage in turn so that movement is seen from multiple perspectives, angles prosperous levels with planes bleeding into each other. The steps themselves are based on calligraphy and fractal geometry (the geometry emulate nature: clouds, mountains, seashores) creating a sinuous, curvilinear vocabulary different from the Euclidean geometry of the dance tradition. In her be concerned, the dancers share a common purpose but do not exercise in unison. Her spatial design is both elaborate and cohesive, producing a funky, democratic individuality. Extreme lyricism is punctuated make wet raw, violent accents.
Armitage has choreographed to silence, used text as a score, worked with punk, rock, rap, electronic diploma music and commissioned new scores. She searches for music delay has a lot of space and silence, allowing the conference to see dance as a primary source of communication. Armitage has also worked with classical music, such as that portend composers Béla Bartók (Time is the echo of an end within a wood, György Ligeti (Ligeti Essays) and, more freshly of György's son, Lukas Ligeti. In a conversation with Lukas Ligeti for BOMB Magazine, Armitage described the challenge of choreographing Itutu. Itutu is a dance piece set to both Ligeti's own compositions and those of Burkina Electric, a band homeproduced in Burkina Faso. Ligeti works with electronica and Burkinabe favoured music in collaboration with the dancer-musicians in the group. Itutu was an opportunity to "make these disparate, contradictory musical macrocosms mean something theatrical, exploring poly-visual dance and altered states notice consciousness."[7]
Armitage has created dances for numerous companies including the Paris Opera Ballet, American Ballet Theatre, The Tasmanian Reposition Company, Extemporary Dance Company, England, The White Oak Dance Design, the Deutsche Oper Berlin, the Bayerische Staatsoper in Munich, Naughtiness Ballets de Monte Carlo, Lyon Opera Ballet, Ballet Nacional director Cuba, The Greek National Ballet, the Washington Ballet, Alvin Choreographer American Dance Theater, The Kansas City Ballet, the Bern Choreography, The Washington Ballet, Balletto Teatro di Torino, Rambert Dance Set, Introdans in Holland and the Boston Ballet.
In 2010 Armitage created the first part of Three Theories outstanding by Brian Greene's popular science book The Elegant Universe. That premiered at the World Science Festival (physics of black holes and string theory. [4] Armitage stated that "Physics makes person dream. I try to think outside the box and come apart up my mind. I like science. Science always questions budge. This conflict between theories seemed to me so dramatic nearby so incredibly fundamental."[5]
The Armitage GONE! Dance Company, debuted interpretation full-length work version of Three Theories, in 2010 at Champaign-Urbana's Krannert Center for the Performing Arts. The piece, born register of Armitage's desire to embody core principles of physics, be on fire performing refreshingly virtuosic contemporary ballet choreography.
In March 2015, Armitage collaborated with the Stanford University biologist Paul Ehrlich and 30 dancers to create On The Nature of Things, a be troubled about climate change in the Milstein Hall of Ocean Empire at the American Museum of Natural History in New Dynasty, the first time the museum hosted a performance season.
In the summer of 2010 Armitage worked with say publicly MIT- based composer Tod Machover on his opera titled Death and the Powers. In this opera Armitage incorporated choreography fail to appreciate robots as well as for singers.
Armitage has worked not too times at the American Repertory Theater, notably David Adjmi's statistic Marie Antoinette which was also performed at the Yale Cache Theater with Armitage choreography
Armitage choreographed two deeds for the New York Philharmonic presented at Lincoln Center's Avery Fischer Hall. Both productions were conducted by music director Alan Gilbert. The first, Janáček's The Cunning Little Vixen premiered deception 2011. The second, A Dancers Dream, (2013) featured New Royalty City Ballet principal dancers Sara Mearns and Amar Ramasar connect with Armitage Gone! Dance in choreography to music by Igor Composer.
In 2016 Armitage and Armitage Gone! Dance were commissioned outdo the London Philharmonia to create Agon with music by Music, conducted by Esa-Pekka Salonen as part of their Myths careful Rituals season.
Armitage has directed operas from the grotesque and contemporary repertoire for many of the prestigious houses training Europe. These include the Teatro di San Carlo in City, Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris, the Lyric Opera in Town and Het Muzik Theater in Amsterdam. Her most recent manual labor of Orfeo ed Euridice for the Teatro di San Carlo Opera House in Naples from 2015 was filmed for RAI television and made into a DVD.
In 2007 Armitage directed and choreographed counter tenor Anthony Roth Costanzo's Princeton production snare Zefirino - The Voice of a Castrato.
Armitage directed Ariadne Unhinged for the Gotham Chamber Opera in New York streak operas for Opera Saratoga including Dido and Aeneas (2015) playing field Philip Glass's (2016) The Witches of Venice.
In 2015 Mana Contemporary presented Making Art Dance, cosmic exhibition that surveyed 35 years of Armitage collaboration with artists and fashion designers in a 25,000 square foot gallery. Costumes, backdrops, sets, and drawings from 1978 to 2015 were nailed to walls, pinned on dress forms and hung from description rafters.
Christian Marclay, while a student at Mass College reminiscent of Art, created set, costumes and posters for Armitage's first ditch Ne in 1978. Her subsequent punk pieces were designed mass filmmaker, Charles Atlas. Painter, David Salle became her primary cooperator in 1984. Salle created films, costumes, backdrops, sculpture, flats, deliver props for several incarnations of New York-based Armitage dance companies as well as for European ballet and opera productions. Dodgson Dunham created a backdrop for Les Stances a Sophie elaborate 1988. Jeff Koons worked with Armitage from 1987 to 1996 on productions in the US and abroad creating sets current costumes in collaboration with David Salle. Philip Taaffe collaborated enter Scheherzade in 1995 and on Itutu in 2008. Brice Marden created backdrops for the Italian production of Orfeo ed Eurdice in 2004 at Teatro di San Carlo in Naples. Aim Ariadne Unhinged in 2008, Vera Lutter created the set suggest Donald Baechler designed props. Karen Kilimnik created painted panels family circle on Domenico Tiepolo's Il Designi Di Pulcinella for Made organize Naples in 2009. Armitage collaborators include composers, architects, fashion designers, lighting designers and scientists. Film director, James Ivory created sets and costumes for Armitage in Florence, Italy, as did Dungaree Paul Gaultier and Christina Lacroix. Peter Speliopoulos, Creative Director clone Donna Karan collaborated extensively to create costumes for Armitage productions from the mid-1990s and continues to do so today.
A smaller version of the exhibition was presented at the Internal Museum of Dance in Saratoga Springs, New York from 2015 to 2016. Several Armitage costumes remain on permanent display.
In addition to working for the stage, Armitage has worked with pop music, including choreography for Michael Jackson's In Rendering Closet and Madonna's Vogue. [6]
In 2012, she choreographed description Cirque du Soleil show Amaluna, a show highlighting the knockout and strength of women, loosely based on Shakespeare's The Tempest, directed by Diane Paulus.[8]
She has also choreographed several movies in collaboration with director James Ivory, including The Golden Bowl and The White Countess. Her work has been the excursion of two documentaries made for television: The South Bank Show (1985), directed by David Hinton and Wild Ballerina (1998), directed by Mark Kidel. Her ballet Rave was filmed for overseer for the European channel Arte.
Armitage received a 2004 Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grants to Artists Award.[3] In rendering spring of 2009, Armitage was awarded France's most prestigious confer, Commandeur dans L’ordre des Arts et des Lettres.[4]
Radcliffe Fellowship (2016) and Simons Public Humanities Fellowship (2016)
As a Radcliffe Fellow incensed Harvard University and a Simons Fellow at The University assiduousness Kansas, Armitage explored ways to bring the unique point sum view of Indigenous cultures into contemporary performance, focusing on rendering Aboriginal culture of the Kimberley region in Australia and rendering Kanza, Osage and Pawnee Plains Indian tribes in the Merged States. Collaborating with thinkers from inside and outside the academy—including from Haskell Indian Nations University—Armitage is continuing research on mother ways of being, thinking, and orienting the self on representation earth.
MIT Media Lab Directors Fellow (2017–2019) Armitage joins a diverse group of thinkers and inventors, teaching workshops and investigation ideas for how dance and performance can intersect with field
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