Karole Armitage is the Artistic Director of Armitage Gone! Dance, based in New York City. The company, launched in 2005, performs annually in New York City and tours in the US and abroad. During company breaks, Armitage directs opera productions or creates new ballets for dance companies in Europe and the U.S.

Karole began dancing at the age of five in her hometown of Lawrence, Kansas. Her first teacher was New York City Ballet ballerina Tomi Worthan. Ms. Wortham instilled in Karole a love for dance by teaching her many of the great Balanchine ballets, performed in annual recitals. During the summer Karole lived in the Colorado wilderness near Crested Butte where her father, a biologist, pursued research. In order to continue her ballet studies, she hiked over a 12,000-foot mountain pass to Aspen to study with Ballet West, returning several weeks later with her pointe shoes in her backpack. At the age of thirteen she traveled to New York to study at the School of American Ballet and later graduated from North Carolina School of the Arts.

From 1973-1975 Karole was a member of the corps de ballet in Balanchine’s Geneva Ballet performing repertoire that included many of his masterworks, such as Agon, Serenade and The Four Temperaments. Karole then joined The Merce Cunningham Dance Company from 1976-1981, learning the repertoire from the inside out as she performed leading roles across the globe.

Back in New York, Karole began to investigate the choreographic process herself. She created her first piece, Ne, in 1978 followed by Drastic-Classicism in 1981, works which led Vanity Fair to christen her the “punk ballerina.” Shortly thereafter, she was invited to present her choreography at several European festivals. This led to a collaboration with the legendary Native American ballerina, Rosella Hightower, who asked Karole to join her in creating a new version of The Nutcracker for the Paris Opera Ballet. In 1984, Mikhail Baryshnikov attended a performance of The Watteau Duets at Dance Theater Workshop in New York City and, while she was still in the shower, came backstage and asked Armitage to create a work for American Ballet Theatre.

Over time, Karole began to work more frequently in Europe. In 1987 Rudolf Nureyev invited her to create a new ballet for the Paris Opera Ballet. This led to further commissions throughout Europe as well as invitations to direct opera. Her growing reputation led to an appointment as Director of the Ballet of Florence, Italy from 1995-1998. There, she created a sensation by programming an extraordinarily wide range of ballets, from Swan Lake to her own collaborations with diverse artists such as fashion designer Jean Paul Gaultier and artist Jeff Koons.

In 2004 she made a triumphant return to New York when the Joyce Theater invited her to create a new work, Time is the echo of an axe within a wood, which received rave reviews in the New York press. In the same year, Karole served as Director of the Venice Biennale International Festival of Contemporary Dance, which featured more than 30 innovative companies from around the world.

Over the last twenty-five years, Karole has had the opportunity to work with a wide range of artists, from the pop star Madonna, to filmmakers Merchant and Ivory, to painter David Salle, to fashion designer Christian Lacroix and composer, György Ligeti. As a choreographer entering her third decade of creativity, Karole looks forward to working full-time in New York again, creating new work that expands our thinking about the dilemmas and beauties of modern life.

Learn more about Karole on her website armitagegonedance.org.