Photo by Julieta Cervantes. Armitage Gone! Dance in “Wild Thing.” Dancers: Kristina Bethel and Matthew Prescott.
Karole Armitage’s recent dances have been intricately elegant outings with complex philosophical underpinnings set to music by such composers as Bartok, Ligeti and Feldman. This time around, she is bringing back some of the works that put her resoundingly on the map as an important, trendsetting choreographer in the early 1980s.
With her 1981 Drastic Classicism premiered in 1981, Armitage decamped from the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, where she performed with amazing vibrancy and devoted herself to her own works. She eagerly tapped into the music and fashion of the moment, and set the dance to Rhys Chatham’s clangorous, often ear-splitting score.
She was soon dubbed the “punk ballerina” by Vanity Fair magazine. She herself cut a striking figure, with her spiky blond hair (which remains the same today) and fierce attack in toe shoes, but the real novelty was her audacious mix of classical ballet with the music and aura of the period’s punk style. The dancing required ballet technique, but the movement was phrased and delivered with a wildness, daring and edge that matched the music’s volume and ferocity. Nothing was sacred or familiar.
“The frenzy was carefully controlled, and the dancing emerged without a stain on it. Classical values that were flayed alive stayed alive,” wrote Arlene Croce in the New Yorker.
So here is Armitage, 28 years later, bringing back several sections of Drastic Classicism, along with excerpts from her 1985 The Watteau Duet, and Wild Thing (from 1987). Watteau, with a score by David Linton, deconstructs the classical pas de deux; Armitage originally performed it (alternating between spike heels and toe shoes) with fellow Cunningham dancer Joseph Lennon. In Wild Thing, which features a set by Jeff Koons, she took on the music of Jimi Hendrix.
On Armitage’s opening night at the Kitchen, the French government is honoring her by awarding her the Commandeur dans l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. This is the highest honor the country bestows on artists and literary figures.
More accustomed to looking forward to her latest project (she has two world premieres coming up in Italy this spring), Armitage found the process of reviving older works somewhat disconcerting. “I was worried about how difficult these pieces are to revive. It’s very physically intense work. There’s live music, composers, lots of costumes—very intense production values that are really hard to pull off. It’s been more than a handful,” she said recently, sitting in an office at The Kitchen while her dancers completed company class before another day of rehearsal.
“What’s interesting about trying to do revivals, is because it wasn’t created on these dancers; it’s much more difficult for them to understand what they’re supposed to be doing—which is a shock to me,” she explained. “When I choreograph on people, I make it so incredibly personal that they don’t have to question what they’re doing. I think that when you don’t participate in the creative process, it’s much harder to get deep inside it. I’ve never tried to do this before, and it’s been very difficult to know how to give them the information they need.”
Asked about her choice to dip into her past at a time when she’s been moving forward on all cylinders, Armitage replied, “A lot of people thought I should do that as the next step in New York, after having come back [after many years when she worked primarily in Europe]. No one from the new generation knew anything about my early work. It would be good to do something that was more pop/rock spirited, rather than these more introspective, existential things.”
Another blast from the past has been occupying her time these past months: she is the choreographer of the Broadway production of Hair that is currently in previews (opening March 31). Juggling rehearsals for The Kitchen program and the show has meant for very long, busy days, but she has relished the chance to flesh out the already exhilarating cascade of free-spirited movement that Hair had when performed last summer in Central Park.
“The concept was exactly the same from the very beginning—which was to make it look as spontaneous and personal and un-choreographed as possible. That is absolutely the key to making my version of Hair work. It needs to be so seamless—so it feels like it’s just The Tribe, as individuals, doing what they do.”
March 4-7 & 11-14 at The Kitchen, 512 West 19 St. (Betw. 10th & 11th Aves.), 212-255-5793, ext. 11; 8, $15.
With her 1981 Drastic Classicism premiered in 1981, Armitage decamped from the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, where she performed with amazing vibrancy and devoted herself to her own works. She eagerly tapped into the music and fashion of the moment, and set the dance to Rhys Chatham’s clangorous, often ear-splitting score.
She was soon dubbed the “punk ballerina” by Vanity Fair magazine. She herself cut a striking figure, with her spiky blond hair (which remains the same today) and fierce attack in toe shoes, but the real novelty was her audacious mix of classical ballet with the music and aura of the period’s punk style. The dancing required ballet technique, but the movement was phrased and delivered with a wildness, daring and edge that matched the music’s volume and ferocity. Nothing was sacred or familiar.
“The frenzy was carefully controlled, and the dancing emerged without a stain on it. Classical values that were flayed alive stayed alive,” wrote Arlene Croce in the New Yorker.
So here is Armitage, 28 years later, bringing back several sections of Drastic Classicism, along with excerpts from her 1985 The Watteau Duet, and Wild Thing (from 1987). Watteau, with a score by David Linton, deconstructs the classical pas de deux; Armitage originally performed it (alternating between spike heels and toe shoes) with fellow Cunningham dancer Joseph Lennon. In Wild Thing, which features a set by Jeff Koons, she took on the music of Jimi Hendrix.
On Armitage’s opening night at the Kitchen, the French government is honoring her by awarding her the Commandeur dans l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. This is the highest honor the country bestows on artists and literary figures.
More accustomed to looking forward to her latest project (she has two world premieres coming up in Italy this spring), Armitage found the process of reviving older works somewhat disconcerting. “I was worried about how difficult these pieces are to revive. It’s very physically intense work. There’s live music, composers, lots of costumes—very intense production values that are really hard to pull off. It’s been more than a handful,” she said recently, sitting in an office at The Kitchen while her dancers completed company class before another day of rehearsal.
“What’s interesting about trying to do revivals, is because it wasn’t created on these dancers; it’s much more difficult for them to understand what they’re supposed to be doing—which is a shock to me,” she explained. “When I choreograph on people, I make it so incredibly personal that they don’t have to question what they’re doing. I think that when you don’t participate in the creative process, it’s much harder to get deep inside it. I’ve never tried to do this before, and it’s been very difficult to know how to give them the information they need.”
Asked about her choice to dip into her past at a time when she’s been moving forward on all cylinders, Armitage replied, “A lot of people thought I should do that as the next step in New York, after having come back [after many years when she worked primarily in Europe]. No one from the new generation knew anything about my early work. It would be good to do something that was more pop/rock spirited, rather than these more introspective, existential things.”
Another blast from the past has been occupying her time these past months: she is the choreographer of the Broadway production of Hair that is currently in previews (opening March 31). Juggling rehearsals for The Kitchen program and the show has meant for very long, busy days, but she has relished the chance to flesh out the already exhilarating cascade of free-spirited movement that Hair had when performed last summer in Central Park.
“The concept was exactly the same from the very beginning—which was to make it look as spontaneous and personal and un-choreographed as possible. That is absolutely the key to making my version of Hair work. It needs to be so seamless—so it feels like it’s just The Tribe, as individuals, doing what they do.”
March 4-7 & 11-14 at The Kitchen, 512 West 19 St. (Betw. 10th & 11th Aves.), 212-255-5793, ext. 11; 8, $15.
