Choreographer Karole Armitage is back at the Abrons Arts Center to inspire and engage audiences with Think Africa!-a festive fusion of dance and live music from the West African tradition. The dynamic dancers of the Armitage Gone! Dance company will perform Ms. Armitage's popular ballet Itutu, a collaborative work with West African electronica band Burkina Electric featuring set and fabric design by Philip Taaffe. As part of Think Africa!, Ms. Armitage will engage in a salon-style dialogue with Dance Theater of Harlem's Virginia Johnson, composer and Burkina Electric band leader Lukas Ligeti, and singer/dancer Mai Lingani on the importance of the African aesthetic.
The word "itutu" translates to "cool" in Yoruba. "To me, 'cool' does mean grace under pressure," Ms. Armitage says. "It is an attitude of behavior in the world, of a kind of dignity and rigor in the face of whatever you come up against."Itutu creates a world without borders and harks back to the tradition of the 'ensalada', a typical Spanish genre, which was very popular in the 16th century. The features of the ensalada are the combination of sacred and secular images, diverse rhythms and different languages. Ensaladas, though rooted in popular culture were performed mainly at important times during the religious calendar.In this 21st Century ensalada, dancers and musicians mix vocabularies and sounds from multiple sources. The riveting African pop sounds of Burkina Electric are performed in several African languages as well as in French and English. The ancient Burkinabé rhythms of Burkina Faso are fused with western club electronica. Armitage's classical abstractions and traditional African dance translate the polyrhythmic music into a poly-visual form. The most mysterious sections are performed to the solos of Lukas Ligeti, unleashed on an electric marimba. Western artists have been in a dialogue with African aesthetics since the turn of the last Century. Itutu celebrates that continuum.
ITUTU
CHOREOGRAPHER Karole Armitage
Having worked extensively in Europe for fifteen years, Armitage returned to New York in 2005, dedicating herself to her company of eleven extraordinary dancers and collaborating with major artists from the contemporary art world and the avant-garde music scene. All are working with her to explore the boundaries of post-modern dance. The following principles guide her creative process:
Seek beauty. Show mutability. Move like a blaze of consciousness. Perfection is the devil. Express the eroticism of gravity.
In keeping with this mandate, Armitage Gone! Dance has built a remarkable repertory in a very short period. Two new full-length ballets were created last season. The first, Itutu received its premiere at BAM's NEXT Wave Festival and has also been performed outdoors at Celebrate Brooklyn!. Itutu, is ?"a sexy, richly layered hit" (NY Times). Created and performed in collaboration with Lukus Ligeti and Burkina Electric, the score mixes African pop, Western club electronica and the ancient rhythms of Burkinabé. Philip Taaffe created the designs for the exuberant backdrops and costume fabrics. The second work, Three Theories is inspired by physicist Brian Greene's best-selling book ?The Elegant Universe.?It premiered at the University of Illinois'Krannert Center and has been presented in New York under the auspices of the 2010 World Science Festival and this past summer at Jacob's Pillow.
Other works in the company's touring rep include Made in Naples which premiered in 2007 at the inaugural Napoli Teatro Festival Italia and was seen in New York at the Guggenheim Museum in New York in 2010; Ligeti Essays and Time is the Echo of an Axe Within a Wood (which the NY Times called?one of the most beautiful dances to be seen in New York in a very long time?); and re-workings of her landmark classics The Watteau Duets and Drastic Classicism which will be excerpted this fall at the Abrons Art Center in NYC as part of the art center's education initiative.
The Company will present a two-week season this coming Spring at The Joyce Theater, April 30 thru May 6, 2011.She has choreographed for pop icons Madonna and Michael Jackson and the filmmakers Merchant and Ivory. Over the years she has collaborated with a distinguished array of artists including Thomas Adès, Jean-Paul Gaultier, Jeff Koons, Christian Lacroix, David Salle, Peter Speliopoulos, Philip Taaffe, Vera Lutter, Karen Kilimnik, Will Cotton and Brice Marden. Her work has been the subject of two documentaries made for television: The South Bank Show (1985) directed by David Hinton and Wild Ballerina (1998) directed by Mark Kidel. Armitage's recent projects include a revival of her production of Gluck?s Orfeo ed Euridice for Teatro di San Carlo, in Naples, Italy (April 2008); a new work for the Bern Ballet (2008); choreography for Passing Strange, which opened on Broadway in February 2008 (Drama Desk Award Nomination for Outstanding Choreography); choreography for The Public Theater's acclaimed production of Hair at the Delacorte Theater in Central Park and currently on Broadway (Tony Award Nomination for Outstanding Choreography, and Astaire Award nomination for Best Broadway Choreographer.)
BURKINA ELECTRIC is the first electronic band from Burkina Faso, in the deep interior of West Africa. Based in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso's capital, it is, at the same time, an international band, with members living in New York and in Germany as well as in Ouaga. Burkina Electric's music combines the traditions and rhythms of Burkina Faso with contemporary electronic dance culture, making it a trailblazer in electronic world music. This diverse and talented group consists of four musicians and two dancers who collectively participate in the creative process and represent disparate musical genres and sounds from across the globe.
Armitage Gone! Dance Education Program at the Abrons Arts Center has been generously underwritten this inaugural season by John Thomson.
Armitage Gone! Dance's 2010-2011 Season is supported with public funds from the National Endowment for the Arts, The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act administered by the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, the New York State Council on the Arts and by The Doris Duke Charitable Trust, The Fan Fox and Leslie R. Samuels Foundation, The Jerome Robbins Foundation, the Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation, the Charles and Joan Gross Family Foundation, the LLWW Foundation, The Shubert Foundation, and others.
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