Karole Armitage
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[edit] Biography
Karole Armitage (born March 3, 1954) is an American dancer and choreographer from Madison, Wisconsin and based in New York.. There were many landmarks in her life that made her the choreographer she is today. During her training she attended many dance schools such as The School of American Ballet and the Harkness Ballet School. She also trained with many companies such as The Geneva Opera Ballet and The Merce Cunningham Dance Company. Throughout her career, Armitage met and worked with many influential names in dance such as Rudolf Nureyev and David Salle. She mastered both ballet and modern dance before she found her personal style and began choreographing in her own right in 1978. She was called “The Punk Ballerina” and showed the world her unique approach to ballet by using techno music and colorful costumes along with abstract body movements normally found in social dance rather than traditional ballet.[1]
[edit] Early Life
Even at a young age, Armitage would stop at nothing to become the experienced dancer she is now. Growing up in Crested Butte, Colorado, she wanted more than anything to train with Ballet West in Aspen, Colorado. This distance did not hinder Armitage, she hiked the whole way there and “returned several weeks later with her pointe shoes in her backpack” [2] After such a remarkable start to her career it was obvious it would not take long for her love of dance to become a lifestyle.
[edit] Style
Armitage was interested in a lot of very different styles when it came to choreography. She was influenced by neoclassicism while she toured with the Geneva Opera Ballet, and later post-modern when she toured with The Merce Cunningham Dance Company, which was where she made a name for herself. Her style is very modern punk but has obvious classical roots. At times, she uses social dance and modern dance movements such as the arm flailing and flexed feet in her piece “Rave”, while at other times she uses many aspects of ballet such as the lifts and partnering style in her piece “Ligeti Essays”. Armitage also incorporates multimedia through the use of strobe lights, background visualization screens and Technicolors, which are very unusual. She is even known as the “Punk Ballerina,” a name given to her by Vanity Fair because of such effects. The Armitage Gone! Dance Company is also known for taking pieces of all kinds of dance as inspiration; Armitage draws on any artistic work from yoga to voguing. Going along with her eclectic style of choreography, she is also interested in having the dancers in her company be of all mixed heights, ethnicities and dancing backgrounds. She is a big believer in mixing all worlds of dance, notably modern and ballet. When she looks for new members to join her company they must be trained in both and Armitage notes that, "People who do only one or the other get left out." [3]
[edit] Experience
Schools that Armitage attended include Ballet West, The North Carolina School of the Arts, University of Utah, The School of American Ballet, and Harkness Ballet School. After Armitage’s schooling she toured with The Geneva Opera Ballet from 1972 to 1975, Then Cunningham’s Company until 1980, and then started the Armitage Ballet and stayed there until 1990. In 2005 she started Armitage Gone! Dance which is still producing works. [4]The first piece she choreographed for an audience was called “Ne”, which was set to punk music and neon lights and was put on in a high school gym. Her next major endeavor was a piece called “Drastic Classicism” which gave her a lot of recognition and in keeping with her abstract theme, she again utilized loud music and out of the ordinary costumes [5]. From then on, Armitage’s style had been situated and very well received.
[edit] Other personal information
Along with Armitage’s amazing contributions in concert dance, she has also accomplished projects in pop dance including choreography for Michael Jackson’s “In The Closet” and Madonna’s “Vogue”. During the 1990’s, Armitage stepped away from dance and began filmmaking. [6]. Karole Armitage has been professionally linked to David Salle, a friend and partner, Theresa Ruth Howard, who tours with Armitage Gone! Dance, Rudolf Nureyev, who asked her personally to create a new dance for the Paris Opera Ballet, and Merce Cunningham, a teacher and friend. She has also spent time in New York and traveling around Europe lending her choreography to many individual companies.
Armitage began her career dancing Balanchine as a member of Ballet du Grand Théâtre de Genève. After joining Merce Cunningham's troupe in the late 1970s, she formed her own dance ensemble. She began to receive international notice as a dancer/choreographer in the early 1980s with a series of modern dances accompanied by punk rock music. Recent collaborators include British composer Thomas Adès and American artist Jeff Koons.
[edit] External links
- Karole Armitage foundation
- profile of Karole Armitage at Smyles & Fish
- Armitage Gone! Dance
- Karole Armitage on Answers.com
[edit] References
- ^ Craine, Debra and Judith Mackrell, “Armitage, Karole,” in The Oxford Dictionary of Dance, Oxford: Oxford University Press, January 13, 2005.
- ^ “Biography,” Biography, Armitage Gone! Dance, http://www.armitagegonedance.org/karole_armitage/bio.php (accessed February 27, 2008).
- ^ Armitage quoted in Elizabeth Zimmer, “Taming the Gypsy in Her Soul,” Dance Magazine, February, 2007.
- ^ Nancy Reynolds and Malcolm McCormick, No Fixed Points: Dance in the Twentieth Century (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003).
- ^ Robert Greskovic, “Karole Armitage” in Fifty Contemporary Choreographers, electronic book edition, ed. Martha Bremser (Hoboken, NJ: Taylor and Francis, 1999), 22.
- ^ “Dictionary of Dance: Karole Armitage,” Karole Armitage, http://www.answers.com/topic/karole-armitage-1?cat=entertainment (accessed April 22, 2008)
