A Brief History of Armitage Gone! Dance

Armitage Gone! Dance was launched in 2005 when Karole Armitage returned to the U.S. after 15 years of working abroad. The company is known for its poetic, dreamlike stage productions that combine new dance, music and art.

Armitage formed her first company in 1979. In 1981 the New Yorker dance critic Arlene Croce wrote, “It is seldom that a young choreographer makes a debut doing a new thing that is exactly the right thing. Karole Armitage’s debut, two years ago, was so startlingly new and so right.”  In 1985, Armitage formed The Armitage Ballet, a company of twelve that toured to festivals and venues worldwide. In 1993, Time magazine declared, “Armitage has emerged as a mature, original choreographer.”

Throughout the 1990s, Armitage chose to maintain her company on a project basis while accepting commissions from European ballet and opera companies. In 2004, The Joyce Theater in New York invited Armitage to create a new ballet and she formed a company of dancers for the project. Of this performance, Jennifer Dunning wrote in the New York Times, “Karole Armitage's Time is the echo of an axe within a wood is one of the most beautiful dances to be seen in New York in a very long time.”

Inspired by the passion and skill of her dancers and the warm reception of her 2004 New York Season, Armitage decided to form a company in New York on a full-time basis. The new company consists of seven members. They come from several countries and have diverse dance backgrounds, though all are primarily trained in classical ballet. They have performed in major companies and now seek to do innovative work that has personal meaning for them.

Armitage will further her investigation of new dance vocabularies wedded to significant contemporary music. She will continue to collaborate with visual artists in her ongoing pursuit of creating great stage design. The company will expand and contract in size depending on the project, though the corps of seven dancers will remain consistent. This fluid company model allows different ideas and theatrical experiences to take shape. Intimate works will continue to play a major role in the company’s future while large-scale collaborations will create opportunities for exceptional events.