Karole Armitage's Fables on Global Warming
The Chinati Foundation is pleased to welcome the community to a performance of a work in progress by Artist in Residence, choreographer Karole Armitage, on Sunday, November 18, 2012 at 7:00 PM at the Crowley Theatre in downtown Marfa. The event is free to the public.
Fables on Global Warming or Fables Sung By An Extinct Skunk or Fables is a ‘performance art musical’ about sustainability, based on traditional animal fables from around the globe. The finished work, for the New York City based Armitage Gone! Dance Company, is being created for 8 dancers and 3 musicians. It explores the connections between humans and animals, culture and nature, science and art. Created by Director/Choreographer Karole Armitage, Visual Director Doug Fitch, and Composer/Lyricist Corey Dargel, Fables entwines dance, song, and visual puns with Asian theatrical traditions. Composer Corey Dargel will perform live, singing and speaking as the narrator. The production is designed to appeal to a wide audience, so that children, newcomers, and all audiences are entertained. The world premiere will take place in September, 2013.
As the culmination of a two-week residency by the Armitage Gone! Dance Company at the Chinati Foundation, Armitage and team will present the work-in-progress performance at the Crowley Theater for the Marfa community. The evening will begin with a brief introduction and a performance of the first scenes with minimal props and costumes. This will be followed by the creative team discussing the project and taking questions from the audience.
Karole Armitage was trained in classical ballet and began her professional career in 1973 as a member of the ballet du Grand Théâtre de Genève, Switzerland, a company devoted exclusively to the repertory of George Balanchine. In 1976, she was invited to join Merce Cunningham’s company, where she remained for five years. Known as the “punk ballerina,” Armitage created her first piece in 1978. Throughout the 80s, she led her own New York-based dance company, Armitage Ballet. From 1999 to 2004 she was resident choreographer of Ballet de Lorraine in France, and in 2005, served as the director of the Venice Biennale Festival of Contemporary Dance. Armitage is renowned for pushing the boundaries to create contemporary works that blend dance, music and art. She has collaborated with contemporary and experimentalist composers such as Rhys Chatham, Vijay Iyer, Lukas Ligeti and John Luther Adams. Sets and costumes for her works have been designed by artists including Jeff Koons, David Salle, Phillip Taaffe and Brice Marden. She choreographed two Broadway productions, Passing Strange and Hair, (which garnered her a Tony® nomination), videos for Madonna and Michael Jackson, and Cirque du Soleil’s 2012 tent show, Amaluna. In 2009, she was awarded France’s most prestigious award, Commandeur dans l’orde des Arts et des Lettres. She has directed operas for the Teatro di San Carlo in Naples, Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris, the Lyric Opera in Athens, and Het Muzik Theater in Amsterdam. She choreographed The Cunning Little Vixen, directed by Doug Fitch, in 2011, for the New York Philharmonic.
Upcoming projects include a new ballet for her company, Mechanics Of The Dance Machine set to Gabriel Prokofiev’s Concerto For Turntables And Orchestra; choreography for Marie Antoinette, by playwright David Adjmi, co-produced by American Repertory Theater Harvard and Yale Repertory Theater; a commissioned ballet on the theme of a Pollock drip painting for the Kansas City Ballet; choreography for Nico Muhly’ s opera A Winter’s Tale co-produced by the McCarter Theatre and the Shakespeare Theatre, Washington D.C, and choreography for the New York Philharmonic production of Le Baiser de la Fée and Petrouschka, directed by Doug Fitch.