 She
first magnetized the eyes of critics and audiences as one of the
quintessential interpreters of Merce Cunningham’s dances and
muse for many of his masterpieces in the mid-seventies and early
eighties; then when she began choreographing—while still a
Cunningham dancer—the press christened her “The Punk
Ballerina.” Her subsequent collaborations with some of the
most important visual and musical artists of her generation added
yet another dimension to her reputation as a singular and spiky
talent who has combined the physical rigor of ballet with the spatial
imagination of modern dance. And now, she is incorporating dance
forms from other cultures into her mix.
Armitage’s company, Armitage
Gone! Dance, will present the world premiere of her “Time
is the echo of an axe within a wood” at The Joyce Theater,
March 2–7. David Salle is the dance’s designer, Peter
Speliopoulos is designing the costumes, and Clifton Taylor, the
lighting. The occasion marks the Company’s first New York
shows since 2001.
The dance’s title is a line
from Philip Larkin’s poem, “This is the first thing.”
The poem reads: “This is the first thing/I have understood:/Time
is the echo of an axe/Within a wood.” The music—Gavin
Bryars, Béla Bartók and Annie Gosfield—shares
the haunting poetry of Asian sounds, powered by a strong
rhythmic undercurrent. Drawing upon, combining and recombining the
vocabularies
of kung fu, capoeira, yoga, Bharatanatyam, vogueing and ballet,
the dance explores the tension between harmony and cacophony, stability
and instability, balance and imbalance. The performers—appropriately
representing a wide range of cultural and dance backgrounds—are
Leonides D. Arpon, Leone Barilli, Brian Chung, Megumi Eda, Theresa
Ruth Howard, William Issac, Valerie Madonia, Cheryl Sladkin, as
well as guest performers Bendeleon, (a self-taught dancer who is
a chef by day), Sharmila Desai, (a descendent of legendary Indian
dancers) and New York “urban” and voguing champions
Aviance Milan and Mecca.
In addition to directing her own
company, Karole Armitage is currently Associate Choreographer with
the Ballet de Lorraine, which is based in Nancy, France. She was
recently named Director of the second International Festival of
Contemporary Dance at the Venice Biennale.
She began her professional career
in 1973, as a member of Ballet du Grand Théâtre de
Genève, Switzerland, and joined the Merce Cunningham Dance
Company in 1976. She formed her company Armitage Gone! Dance in
1979, while still a member of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company.
She left the Cunningham Company in 1991 to work regularly with her
own group of dancers, first called Armitage Gone! Dance (1979–1984)
and then, The Armitage Ballet (1985–1990), which performed
across the United States and Europe.
In 1990, Armitage chose to maintain her company on a project basis
in order to pursue commissions from major European ballet and opera
companies. As a guest choreographer she created ballets for the
Paris Opera Ballet, American Ballet Theatre, White Oak Dance Project,
the Deutsche Oper Berlin, Bayersiche Staatsoper in Munich, Les Ballets
de Monte Carlo, Oregon Ballet Theater, Lyon Opera Ballet, The Tasmanian
Dance Company, Greek Lyric Opera, among others. Armitage’s
work has also appeared in music videos for artists such as Madonna
(“Vogue”) and Michael Jackson (“In the Closet”)
as well as in the feature films Chain of Desire, Without You I’m
Nothing, Search and Destroy, Up at the Villa and The Golden Bowl.
She was appointed Director of MaggioDanza
in Florence, Italy, where from 1996 to 1999 she supervised 45 dancers
in a repertoire of 19th and 20th century ballets. Her work in Florence
alternated between large-scale works designed for general audiences
such as Georg Frideric Handel’s baroque oratorio “Apollo
e Dafne” (1997) with sets and costumes by film director James
Ivory and smaller scale works devoted to pure dance.
With New York now as a base, Armitage
continues to work as an independent choreographer, alternating projects
for Ballet de Lorraine, guest commissions and work for her own company.
In 2003, she created a new work for London’s Rambert Dance
Company and choreographed and directed Chrisoph Willibald Gluck’s
“Orfeo ed Euridice” for the San Carlo Opera in Naples.
Her company had a week-long season at Het Muziek Theater, Amsterdam,
this past January.
Over the years, her collaborators
have included Thomas Adès, Andrea Branzi, Jean-Paul Gaultier,
James Ivory, Jeff Koons, Christian Lacroix, Stefano Paba, David
Salle, David Shea, Peter Speliopoulos and Philip Taaffe. 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.
Her awards include a Guggenheim Fellowship in choreography in 1986
and the French Government’s Chevalier dans L’ordre des
Arts et Lettres in 1992.
The evening curtain for Armitage
Gone! Dance’s Joyce Theater season, Tuesday through Saturday,
is at 8pm; the Sunday evening curtain is at 7:30pm. There will also
be 2pm matinees on Saturday and Sunday. Tickets are $36, and are
available at The Joyce Theater box office or by calling JoyceCharge
at 212-242-0800 or online at www.joyce.org. The Joyce Theater is
located at 175 Eighth Avenue at 19th Street.
###
Leadership support for The Joyce Theater’s 2003–2004
season has been received from the LuEsther T. Mertz Charitable Trust.
This Joyce presentation is made possible,
in part, with public funds from the National Endowment for the Arts
and the New York State Council on the Arts, a state agency, and
with private funds from The Fan Fox and Leslie R. Samuels Foundation,
Inc. to encourage the performance of New York City-based companies
at The Joyce Theater.
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