'Werk!: The Armitage Gone Variety Show' Plays Abrons Arts Center, Now thru 5/5

In a career spanning three decades, the American choreographer Karole Armitage has continuously bridged contemporary ballet with the worlds of visual art and fashion. Luminaries such as Jeff Koons, David Salle, Philip Taaffe and Brice Marden have created sets and costumes for her dances. She is described as "pioneering in her valorization of voguing, creating the video for Madonna’s 'Vogue' in 1992 and serving on the jury of many of New York’s underground voguing balls, elaborate early 1980s events in which 'walkers' competed in a series of categories emulating high fashion, style or a ways of being."

 

Werk!: The Armitage Gone Variety Show exemplifies Armitage’s artistry: The eveing is anchored by the American premiere of Rave, a work that mixes voguing with a vast array of other movement forms, resulting in a unique combination of ball, ballet and carnival. In the polymorphous, celebratory spirit of the piece—and characteristic of her embrace of visual art—she has invited Will Cotton, Doug Fitch, Kalup Linzy, Richard Phillips, Aïda Ruilova and William Wegman to contribute short (5-to-10-minute) pieces to the program, which will conclude with Rave, performed by Armitage Gone! Dance.

 

Werk!: The Armitage Gone Variety Show will be held at the Abrons Arts Center, located at 466 Grand Street, on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. Performances will take place tonight, May 2 at 7:30 P.M.; May 4 at 7:30 & 10:00 P.M.; and May 5 at 7:30 & 10:00 P.M. Tickets are $30 and can be purchased by calling 212.598.0400 or by visiting www.abronsartscenter.org.

 

Rave is a celebratory happening mixing dance, capoeira, voguing, the Chinese martial art wushu and catwalk for 26 dancers in iconic costumes ranging from Marilyn Monroe to American Indian chief. The dancers paint their bodies in bright colors from head to toe: orange, purple, green, gray, blue. Armitage originally created Rave in 2001, when she was resident choreographer for the French company Ballet de Lorraine, as a response to the events of September 11. That tragedy served merely as a point of departure for a work that is not preoccupied with mourning, but rather honors the dead with a carnivalesque sense of celebration.

 

In performing Rave, the Armitage Gone! Dance company—Sara Beery, Megumi Eda, Sean Hilton, Abbey Roesner, Bennyroyce Royon, Marlon Taylor-Wiles, Emily Wagner, Mei-Hua Wang, Jacob Michael Warren and Masayo Yamaguchi—will be joined by guest dancers from the Ailey School. The work features a commissioned score by David Shea, costumes by Peter Speliopoulosand lighting by Clifton Taylor.

 

Rave has toured Europe to acclaim. Dominique Fretard of Le Monde has called it “a gift, a rare pearl, offering as much delight to an audience that is familiar with the choreographer’s work as to one that discovers it,” and added, “The music, by David Shea, and the very structure of the piece embrace the relentless rhythms of the bateria parades in Rio de Janeiro and in Bahia, though with the elegance of a Venetian festival of the Dead, one that could at any moment turn to orgy.”

 

The format Armitage has devised for the American premiere of Rave extends the work’s sense of wild variety and hybridization by including a diversity of short works—opening acts of sorts—by other artists. One of these is a new iteration of painter Will Cotton’s performance piece Cockaigne. Conceived, designed and directed by Cotton, Cockaigne is divided into two distinct parts, each expressing the peculiar nature of an ephemeral confection: the first celebrates whipped cream, and the second celebrates cotton candy. 

 

Cockaigne grew out of Cotton’s deepening interest in time-based art, which arose out of his work on the music video for Katy Perry’s “California Gurls.” He wanted to work with the notion that a substance could take on the role of main character within a narrative. InCockaigne, Cotton employs ballet and burlesque to explore the idea. Inspired by the erotic fan dance tradition, Whipped Cream Danceis choreographed and performed by Miss Ruby Valentine (a burlesque dancer Cotton has often painted), to music composed by Caleb Burhans. Part two of Cockaigne, Cotton Candy Dance, is choreographed by Charles Askegard to music composed by John Zorn, and will be performed by three ballerinas. The dancers movements evoke the airy strands of spinning sugar that become clouds of cotton candy. 

 

For his part, Doug Fitch will offer A Moment of Concern, in which his head—appearing bodiless, talking and perhaps singing a song—occupies a miniature room that breaks down into little pieces that blow away, operated by puppeteers, over the course of the performance. 

 

Kalup Linzy will contribute a video. William Wegman will bring along one of his famous dogs, which will join Emily Wagner and Sean Hilton for a dance.

 

More details about these portions of the program, along with information about the contributions of Richard Phillips and Aïda Ruilova, will be announced soon.