Wild Thing, un duo de 1981, où les danseurs parodient un couple sur la reprise de la célèbre chanson de Chip Taylor par Jimi Hendrix.

Karole Armitage, known as the 'punk ballerina' is the Artistic Director of the New York-based Armitage Gone! Dance Company. She was rigorously trained in classical ballet and began her professional career as a member of the Ballet du Grand Théâtre de Genève, Switzerland (1973-1975), a company devoted exclusively to the repertory of George Balanchine who was director of the company at that time. In 1976, she was invited to join Merce Cunningham's company, where she remained for five years, (1975-1981) performing leading roles in Cunningham's landmark works. Through her unique and acute knowledge of the aesthetic values of Balanchine and Cunningham, Armitage has created her own "voice" in the dichotomy of classical and modern dance, and is seen by some critics as the true choreographic heir to the two masters of 20th century American dance.  In 2016, Armitage was honored with a Radcliffe Fellowship at Harvard University and a Simons Fellowship at The University of Kansas to study Native American Plains Culture with a focus on Pawnee, Kanza and Osage tribes. In 2017 she is beginning a muliti year Fellowship as an MIT Media Lab Directors Fellow.    

Armitage created her first piece in 1979, followed by the iconic Drastic-Classicism in 1981. Throughout the 80s, she led her own New York-based dance company, The Armitage Ballet. Commissions from the Paris Opera Ballet and American Ballet Theatre led to choreographic commissions in Europe throughout the 80s, 90s and into the early 2000s with projects that continue to this day. She has created new works on companies and served as director of multiple Ballets and Companies.

Armitage is renowned for pushing the boundaries to create contemporary works that blend dance, music, visual ar and science to engage in philosophical questions about the search for meaning. She joins a legacy of process-focused experiemntal dance that embraces the ballet and modern dance heritages as well. She is inspired by disparate, non-narrative sources, from 20th century physics, to 16th century Florentine fashion, to pop culture and new media. In her hands, the classic vocabulary is given a needed shock to its system, with speed, fractured lines, abstractions and symmetry countermanded by asymmetry. Music is her script and she has collaborated with contemporary and experimentalist composers such as John Luther Adams, Thomas Adès, Rhys Chatham, Terry Dame, Vijay Iyer, David Lang, Lukas Ligeti, Lois V Vierk and John Zorn. The scores can be marked by extreme lyricism as well as dissonance, noise and polyrhythms. The sets and costumes for her works are often designed by leading artists in the contemporary art world, including Karen Kilimnik, Jeff Koons, Vera Lutter, Brice Marden, David Salle and Phillip Taaffe. Her scientific collaborators include Dr. Brian Greene (Columbia University) and Dr. Paul Ehrlich (Stanford University). The full-length works on theoretical physics and climate change respectively were presented at the World Science Festival and in the Milstein Hall of Ocean Life at the American Museum of Natural History.

Armitage’s work is at once both esoteric and popular, having choreographed two Broadway productions, videos for Madonna and Michael Jackson, several Merchant-Ivory films and Cirque du Soleil’s 2012 tent show. As the 2016 Artistic Director of Italy’s Ravello Fesival for an evening of American Dance, Armitage invited New York City Ballet, Martha Graham Dance Company, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, William Forsythe, Richard Move and her company to participate in a survey of the techniques and philosophies of American Dance set into motion by Native Americans performing the Prairie Chicken Dance.

She has directed operas from the baroque and contemporary repertoire for prestigious houses of Europe. In 2009, she was awarded France’s most prestigious award, Commandeur dans l'orde des Arts et des Lettres. She is the 2012 recipient of the artist-in-residence grant at the Chinati Foundation, founded by Donald Judd in Marfa, Texas, and received an honorary Doctorate of the Arts from the University of Kansas in 2013.

Source : Armitage Gone ! Dance 

re information : https://www.armitagegonedance.org/

Armitage Gone! Dance, a été lancé en 2004 lorsque Karole Armitage est revenu aux États-Unis après 15 ans de travail à l’étranger. Dédiée à redéfinir les limites et la perception de la danse contemporaine, la compagnie prolonge le mandat d'innovation qui la caractérise à la fois dans son précédent Armitage Ballet, fondé en 1985, et sa première compagnie à temps plein, Armitage Gone !, fondée en 1979.

Surnommée la «ballerine punk» dans les années 1980, Armitage distingue sa compagnie de ses contemporains par son extrême polyvalence et son originalité. S'appuyant sur des idiomes classiques et modernes allant des traditions Balanchine aux traditions Cunningham, Armitage imprègne la pensée expérimentale de l'équilibre géométrique, de la vitesse, du rythme et de la beauté des pas de danse. Jennifer Dunning, critique de danse pour le New York Times, a écrit que Time était l'écho d'une hache dans un bois, créée en 2004, "une des plus belles danses à être vue à New York depuis très longtemps". Elle puise son inspiration dans des sources telles que la physique, l'esthétique japonaise, la mode, la culture pop, les nouveaux médias et ses danseuses de divers horizons culturels et dansés.

Armitage Gone! Dance est bien connue pour ses collaborations avec des innovateurs dans les domaines de la musique, des sciences et des arts visuels, notamment les artistes David Salle et Jeff Koons et le physicien de la théorie des cordes, Brian Greene. La compagnie se produit régulièrement sur de la musique live et a commandé de nombreuses partitions depuis ses débuts en 2004. Connu pour son panache d'esprit libre, Armitage Gone! Dance apportent des saveurs uniques et une forte personnalité à la scène. 

Le cœur de la production de la compagnie est centré sur une série de « paysages de rêve » dansés qui entraînent le spectateur dans un voyage. Ayant travaillé comme chorégraphe pour le Cirque du Soleil, Madonna, Michael Jackson et Broadway, Armitage a de nombreux intérêts, mêlant le populaire au marginal ainsi que la technique et les traditions du ballet à la danse moderne.

La société est soutenue par le National Endowment for the Arts, le Département des affaires culturelles de la ville de New York, le Conseil des arts de l'État de New York, le National Dance Project et le Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, ainsi que par des commanditaires privés, des fondations et des particuliers.

Source : Armitage Gone! Dance

En savoir plus : www.armitagegonedance.org