Interview with Karole Armitage

Sim · May 1, 2019

BalletcoForum had a quick chat with dancer/choreographer Karole Armitage, whose piece From Dirt to Soil is currently touring as part of a triple bill with the Trinity/Laban Transitions company.

First of all, can you please give me a little information about yourself; whatever you think is important for our readers to know!

I am a choreographer, but also an opera director and businesswoman having successfully run a dance company for 30 years that pays dancers a living weekly wage - not just a stipend as is becoming common practice in the US. I enjoy nature tremendously. I count hiking and camping along with seeing new art, both visual and performing, as my greatest pleasure. I like discovery. Nothing bores me more than watching something I already understand.

You have been referred to in the past as 'the punk ballerina.' Can you explain why you have been/are perceived as such?

I was a ballerina, having danced in the Geneva Ballet under George Balanchine’s direction, performing his repertoire exclusively and training in his technique from age five, when the Sex Pistols came to my delighted attention. At the time, I was a member of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company. Three forces shaped my desire to choreograph at that time: 1) rock n roll was becoming staid, commercial and unoriginal, but punk brought back an exciting raw power; 2) official forward-thinking dance of the downtown world was preaching a moralistic, repressive, very white aesthetic of “no”- no theatricality, no meaning, no emotion, o music, etc. and I wanted to bring communication about the larger world back to the audience experience. I wanted to do so with a cast that reflected the world around me, a multi-cultural rainbow that embraced both the raw and the refined, high and low, punk and poetry; 3) I wanted to present a woman’s point of view, changing the elusive muse into a woman of erotic and independent standing.

Do you think classical ballet still has a valid place within dance? Some sections of press and audience who particularly enjoy contemporary dance often say it is a dying art form. What do you think of that sentiment?

Classical ballet is a style with a history and a repertoire on the one hand, but it is also an extraordinary technology, allowing the body to move with great freedom and articulation. We can use the technology of ballet to show thinking in ways that reflect our time. Naturally, the status quo resists change. This can be damaging to ballet’s future in finding an audience, especially a younger audience. I am a black sheep for many in the dance world as some think I betrayed ballet by bringing in new influences; the same is true about the world of modern dance. However, art, like culture is always changing and to deny change is to deny life. It is imperative to keep the history of ballet alive through classical repertoire presented at the highest level AND to reinvigorate it with thinking of today. We must know history in order to advance. This applies to art as well as politics.

Turning to your own work, what inspires you? Where do you get your ideas from? Have you ever had a dance hero/heroine, be it a dancer or choreographer?

I am a great admirer of my two mentors with whom I had the great good fortune to work: Balanchine and Cunningham. But that doesn’t mean I have to copy them. My inspiration comes from curiosity – I want to understand what makes people tick and to glean ideas about how culture and the world operate. I am very interested in bringing ideas and the discipline of science into the dance arena.

How do you put a piece together? Do you get an idea, then start thinking of the music, then the steps, then the design....or????

There is no formula and every piece is different. Dance is an activity I engage in as way to understand something I do not know.

Can you tell me about the piece you have made for the Transitions Company, From Dirt to Soil? From what I have read, it is to do with the current state of the Earth, with special reference to the ecology. Perhaps you can tell me how it was conceived, and what you are trying to convey to the audiences.

From Dirt to Soil is danced to a text by a brilliant scientist, Wes Jackson, based in Kansas in the US. He is reinventing agriculture so that people will be able to eat as the devastation of global warming changes farming practices irrevocably. He is not only a radical thinker in science, but is a true spiritual leader, reframing the questions of how society thinks about itself. From Dirt to Soil is a movement journey reflecting the urgent conceptual change required for humans to see themselves as a part of the planet, not as its dominator. It is a meditation through dance with humour, intense athletics and the glory of pure dance, which is its own delight.

If there is anything else you'd like to say that I haven't covered in the above questions, please do so here.

I loved working with Transitions. The company includes a wonderfully diverse group of dancers bringing a variety of spices from many different cultures and dance experiences into the room. They worked very hard and with great dedication. The process was a joy.

The Transitions tour dates/venues are as follows. Please see website below for further information:

1st May

Mercury Theatre, Colchester

19:30

www.mercurytheatre.co.uk

4th May

Dance House, Cardiff

19:30

https://dancehouse.wales

14th May

University of Chichester

To book tickets, please email s.francis@chi.ac.uk