Biography
Karole Armitage is the Artistic Director of Armitage Gone! Dance, based in New York City. The company, launched in 2005, performs annually in New York City and tours in the US and abroad. During company breaks, Armitage directs opera productions or creates new ballets for dance companies in Europe and the U.S.
Karole Armitage began her professional career in 1973, as a member of Ballet du Grand Théâtre de Genève, Switzerland, a company devoted exclusively to Balanchine repertoire. There she performed many Balanchine masterworks including Agon, The Four Temperaments and Serenade. From 1976–1981 she was a member of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company. Armitage created her first piece Ne in 1978 followed by Drastic Classicism in 1981. Throughout the 80s she led her own New York-based dance company. In 1984, after a performance of her Watteau Duets at Dance Theater Workshop, Mikhail Baryshnikov invited her to create a work for American Ballet Theatre. In 1987, Rudolph Nureyev asked her to create her fourth dance for the Paris Opera Ballet. Its success led to many European commissions.
In 1990, Armitage chose to maintain her company on a project basis in order to pursue work with major European ballet and opera companies. She was appointed Director of MaggioDanza in Florence, Italy, where from 1995 to 1998 she supervised 45 dancers in the classical repertoire and created her own work. From 1999–2002 she was the resident choreographer of the Ballet de Lorraine in France, which toured her work throughout Europe. In 2002, Armitage was awarded France’s prestigious arts award, Officier dans L’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. In 2004, she made a triumphant return to New York when the Joyce Theater invited her to create a new ballet. Armitage Gone! Dance was launched in 2005. In the same year, she served as the Director of the Venice Biennale International Festival of Contemporary Dance. Last spring Armitage was awarded France’s most prestigious arts award, Commandeur dans L'Ordres des Arts et des Lettres.
She has created dances for numerous companies including, to name a few, the White Oak Dance Project, the Deutsche Oper Berlin, Les Ballets de Monte Carlo, Lyon Opera Ballet, the Washington Ballet, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, and the Rambert Dance Company. She has also directed operas from the Baroque and contemporary repertoire for many of the prestigious houses of Europe including Teatro di San Carlo in Naples, Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris, the Lyric Opera in Athens and the Het Muzik Theater in Amsterdam. She has choreographed for the camera for pop icons Madonna and Michael Jackson and the filmmakers Merchant and Ivory. Over the years she has collaborated with a distinguished array of artists including Thomas Adès, Andrea Branzi, Jean-Paul Gaultier, Jeff Koons, Christian Lacroix, David Salle, Peter Speliopoulos, Philip Taaffe and Brice Marden.
Her work has been the subject of two documentaries made for television: The South Bank Show (1985) directed by David Hinton and Wild Ballerina (1998) directed by Mark Kidel. In 2008, her choreograpy appeared on Broadway for the first time in the crticially acclaimed new musical Passing Strange. Karole Armitage’s many projects in 2008-09 include choreography for the Pubic Theater’s production of Hair, a new work for Bern Ballet in Switzerland and The Kansas City Ballet. For Armitage Gone! Dance, she is creating several new works: Summer of Love, a Dionysian celebration with African pop group Burkina Electric to premiere in Taormina in Siciliy; Mashup to music of punk band X-Ray Specs with Mozart,and Pulcinella to be crfeated in Naples, the city of Pulcinella’s birth. The company will also be reviving several Armitage punk classics from the late 70s and early 80s with live music fo rthe 2008-2009 season.
