Karole Armitage

KAROLE ARMITAGE (AG!D Artistic  Director/Founder) of the New York-based Armitage Gone! Dance Company, was rigorously trained in classical ballet. As a professional dancer she performed in Balanchine’s Grand Théâtre de Genève Company and in the Merce Cunningham Dance Company. Armitage is renowned for pushing boundaries to create contemporary works to engage in philosophical questions about the search for meaning. She directed the Ballet of Florence, Italy (1995–99); the Biennale of Contemporary Dance in Venice (2004); and served as resident choreographer for the Ballet de Lorraine in France (1999–2004). She has created works for many companies from The Bolshoi Ballet in Moscow and the Ballet de L’Opéra de Paris to the Tasmanian Dance Company in Australia. She has directed opera at important European opera houses indcluding Teatro di San Carlo in Naples, Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris, and the National Opera in Amsterdam, and she has choreographed two productions for the New York Philharmonic at Lincoln Center. Armitage’s work is at once both esoteric and popular. She choreographed Broadway productions of Passing Strange and Hair (the latter earning her a Tony nomination), videos for Madonna and Michael Jackson, several films for Merchant Ivory productions, and the Cirque du Soleil production Amaluna (2012). Armitage, the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, was awarded Commandeur de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, France’s most prestigious award in 2009, and holds an honorary Doctorate of the Arts from the University of Kansas (2013). As a Radcliffe Fellow at Harvard University and a Simons Fellow at The University of Kansas in 2015 and 2016, she studied Native American Plains Culture. Armitage is currently an MIT Media Lab Director’s Fellow, where she is developing costumes and props with Media Lab PhD Students using emerging technology for a new work to premiere in April 2019 at the Japan Society in New York City.