Karole Armitage, artistic director of the New York-based Armitage Gone! Dance Company, is renowned for pushing the boundaries to create contemporary works that blend dance, music, science, and art to engage in philosophical questions about the search for meaning. Rigorously trained in classical ballet, she has performed in Balanchine’s Grand Théâtre de Genève Company and in the Merce Cunningham Dance Company. As a choreographer, Armitage has created productions for the New York Philharmonic at Lincoln Center and many companies, from the Bolshoi Ballet in Moscow to the Ballet de L’Opéra de Paris to the Tasmanian Dance Company in Australia. She has also directed performances at premier European opera houses: Teatro di San Carlo in Naples, Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris, and De Nationale Opera in Amsterdam.
Armitage’s work is at once both esoteric and popular. She has choreographed Broadway productions (Passing Strange and Hair), videos for Madonna and Michael Jackson, several films for Merchant Ivory productions, and the Cirque du Soleil production, Amaluna. Armitage, the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, was named a Commandeur de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, France’s most prestigious award in 2009, and she holds an honorary Doctorate of the Arts from the University of Kansas (2013). She is currently a Radcliffe Fellow at Harvard University and a Simons Fellow at The University of Kansas, studying Native American plains culture.