Karole Armitage

Known as the “punk ballerina,” Karole Armitage’s career has been multi-faceted. In addition to working as a choreographer, director, and opera director in Europe and the United States, she formed IAmADancerFilms in 2019. The films she creates are made by and with dancers who perform roles including cast, crew, gimbal operators, and designers.  

Armitage was rigorously trained in classical ballet and began her professional career as a member of the Ballet du Grand Théâtre de Genève in Switzerland (1973-75). In 1976, she was invited to join the Merce Cunningham Dance Company where she remained for five years (1975–81), performing leading roles in Cunningham's landmark works. She was also the Artistic Director of the New York based Armitage Gone! Dance Company (1983–2019).  

Armitage created her first piece in 1979. Throughout the 1980s, she led her own New York-based dance company, The Armitage Ballet. Commissions from the Paris Opera Ballet and American Ballet Theatre led to choreographic commissions in Europe throughout the ’80s, ’90s, and early 2000s, with projects that continue to this day. She has created new works on companies including the Bolshoi Ballet in Moscow, the Tasmanian Dance Company, Ballet de Monte Carlo, Lyon Opera Ballet, Ballet Nacional de Cuba, Washington Ballet, Boston Ballet, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, Kansas City Ballet, the Greek National Company, the Bern Ballet, and Rambert Dance Company of London. 

Armitage is renowned for pushing boundaries to create contemporary works that blend dance, music, visual art, and science to engage in philosophical questions about the search for meaning. She is inspired by disparate, non-narrative sources, from 20th century physics to 16th century Florentine fashion, Japanese Noh Ghost Theater, pop culture, and new media. From the inception of her work as an artistic director, she made a commitment to create a company that looked like New York City, with dancers of many backgrounds, ethnicities, cultures, and nationalities. 

Armitage has choreographed two Broadway shows (Passing Strange and Hair, which garnered her a Tony Award nomination), videos for Madonna and Michael Jackson, several Merchant Ivory films, and Cirque du Soleil’s 2012 tent show, Amaluna. She is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, Commandeur dans l'ordre des Arts et des Lettres, the artist-in-residence grant at the Chinati Foundation, an honorary doctorate from the University of Kansas, a Radcliffe Fellowship at Harvard, and a Simons Fellowship at the University of Kansas. She was an MIT Media Lab Directors Fellow, investigating ways to bring to the stage new technology with a poetic impact.