AGD History

Armitage Gone! Dance 

Closed in the spring 2022.

Political and cultural forces eroded the ecosystem that made a dance company sustainable. The erosion over the past several decades has gotten steadily worse.

Armitage Gone! Dance/The Armitage Ballet was formed in 1985 following the success of Armitage's early choreographic explorations in 1979. The company presented a home season annually in New York City and toured in the US and abroad. The Foundation paid a roster 65 dancers a weekly salary for 40 years, hired numerous designers to create costume, set, and lighting design. The company donated its services to important issues from AIDS to ecological justice and invited admired fellow artists including Willy Ninja and the Hosue of Ninja to join in home seasons.

The forces of change include:

• on demand habits
• the post covid audience decline
• the rise of social media = a no authority perspective
• the decline of newspapers making it impossible to inform the public about events
• the lack of writing about dance; decline of newspapers
• the decline of touring in the US and abroad
• the decline of intellectual culture that supports innovation and challenging ideas
• the ever increasing dominance of material culture
• the ever increasing dominance of celebrity culture

The Foundation is proud to have paid dancers a weekly salary significantly higher than the industry standard. The day always began with company class, taught by a roster of former New York City Ballet dancers and other important professionals including Charles Askegard, Paul Boos, Antonia Franceschi, Heather Hawk, Linda Gelinas, Robert LaFosse, Miranda Weese, and William Whitner. The company reheased daily for six hours after class develop9ing a new way of thinking and moving built on a ballet and modern dance heritage.  Rehearsal director Christina Johnson contibutied invaluable guidance. It is only by working all day, everyday that a company can create a culture together enabling dancers to push intellectual, physical and philosophical knowledge that goes into the body and out to an audience. Dance is a profession, not a hobby as it has become today, requiring dancers to support their vocation by taking often menial jobs in other fields. 

For over 30 years, Karole Armitage and her dancers shaped the evolution of contemporary dance through the creation and performance of new works. The most recent incarnation of the company, Armitage Gone! Dance, was launched in 2004 when Karole Armitage returned to the U.S. after 15 years of working abroad. Dedicated to redefining the boundaries and perception of contemporary dance, the company extends the mandate of innovation that characterizes both her earlier Armitage Ballet, founded in 1985, and her first project based company, Armitage Gone!, founded in 1979.

Building on classical and modern idioms from the Balanchine to the Cunningham traditions, Armitage infuses experimental thinking in the geometric balance, speed, rhythm and beauty of dance steps. Much of the company output in the mid aughts centered on a series of dance ‘dreamscapes’ that take the viewer on a poetic journey to evoke mysterious landscapes of reverie, dream and altered consciousness. Jennifer Dunning, dance critic for the New York Times, wrote of Time is the echo of an axe within a wood which premiered in 2004, "one of the most beautiful dances to be seen in New York in a very long time." The goal was not representation but a secular experience of transcendence. Armitage derived inspiration from sources such as physics, Japanese aesthetics, fashion, pop culture, new media, and from her dancers, of diverse cultural and dance backgrounds. During this time, Armitage invited her collaborator, Willy Ninja and the House of Ninja, to perform with the company.

Since its launch in 2004, Armitage Gone! Dance presented several New York seasons each year at venues that include Brooklyn Academy of Music, The Joyce Theater, The Kitchen, The Miller Theatre, New York City Center, The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, The Milstein Hall of Ocean Life at the American Museum of Natural History, New York Live Arts and Lincoln Center. The company offered educational (k-12) programs at the Abrons Art Center/Henry Street Settlement. The company also regularly performed at premier festivals and venues throughout the United States, Europe and Central America, from Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival to the Venice Biennale Festival of Contemporary dance and the Leon Mexico Dance Festival. 

The Foundation maintains an archive of Armitage's work, including a collection of papers, photos, videos, costumes and artifacts documenting the activities of Armitage and her collaborators. The Foundation currently manages IAmADancerFilms.

IAmADancerFilms, created in 2019, is a production company, made by and with dancers who perform roles including cast, crew, gimbal operators, production designers and costume designers. IAmADancerFilms makes work designed specifically for the screen to show dance from new perspectives. The cinematic styles include art films, hybrid documentaries and installations and run in length from shorts to feature length films.

The company was supported by the National Endowment for the Arts, New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, New York State Council for the Arts, The National Dance Project, and the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, as well as corporate, foundation and individual patrons. Most important to the economic success of the company was the Circle of Artists, a collection of Armitage peers in the visual arts who donated artwork to the Foundation.