How Tony Nominee Karole Armitage Gave Hair Its Groovy Moves
Age: “Child of the '60s.”
Hometown: Lawrence, Kansas
Currently: Savoring her Best Choreographer Tony Award nomination for the hit Broadway revival of Hair.
Not in Kansas Anymore: Dubbed “the Punk Ballerina” by Vanity Fair in the 1980s, this queen of modern dance took a (very) roundabout route to Broadway. Armitage began studying ballet at age five and got serious about her craft right away. “Instead of supermodels, it was the Balanchine ballerinas who were glamorous to me, and I wanted to partake in all of that,” she recalls in her smoky, Jane Fonda-esque voice. “By age 13, I was in New York studying, and then I went away to junior high school and high school at North Carolina School of the Arts. I’m very close to my family so it was wrenching, but I wanted to pursue my dream and they allowed me to do that.” After graduation, Armitage was plucked for the ensemble in Balanchine’s own Geneva Ballet. “I was young and shy and he was a very charming gentleman,” she says, adding with a laugh, “He would go out to dinner surrounded by 30 girls—and he was very, very happy.”
Modern Life: As she gained experience, Armitage found herself drawn to modern ballets such as Agon, set to the music of Stravinsky. “All of Balanchine’s ‘leotard ballets,’ as we call them, have an edginess,” she explains. “I felt that I wasn’t really cut out to be in a tutu and play an imperial or romantic figure. I was much more a frontier girl, and I wanted to find out what modern dance was.” She spent five years in Merce Cunningham’s company, then turned to choreography herself. “Punk came along, and I realized that there are new ways to think about dance,” Armitage says. “I’ve always been interested in pushing borders and looking at things in different ways.” Her career got a boost when Mikhail Baryshnikov and Rudolf Nureyev commissioned new works, which attracted attention from bigwigs in other creative fields.
Dancing with the Stars: Armitage’s list of collaborators is a name-dropper’s delight, ranging from Madonna and Michael Jackson to fashion designers Jean Paul Gaultier and Christian Lacroix, artists David Salle and Jeff Koons and composers Gyorgy Ligeti and Stew (more on him below). “It’s always been word of mouth,” she says of her star-packed resume. “Madonna knew about me because of the punk scene, and she recommended me to Michael Jackson; an artist recommended me to Merchant and Ivory [for the film The Golden Bowl]. Being an avant garde choreographer, I’ve had to be clever to create opportunities to keep my dancers working.” Along the way, Armitage has run dance companies in Italy and France, directed baroque operas all over Europe and now tours the world with Armitage Gone!, her own dance troupe. “I assumed I would get married and have kids and a normal life,” she insists, “but one thing led to another.”
Strange Days: The punk scene provided Armitage with an unlikely path to her Broadway debut when she got a call to choreograph Passing Strange. “Stew [the show’s composer and star] knew of me from the punk era, and the Public Theater and the director [Annie Dorsen] somehow knew about me, even though they had nothing to do with dance.” Her work process on Passing Strange sounds a tad less stratified than most musicals: “We just went into the studio, and whenever there was music they’d say, ‘Karole, do something.’ It was very spontaneous.” Armitage found that she loved working with actors, noting, “The way they think about movement is so different from a dancer.” When the Public decided to present a concert version of Hair in Central Park in September 2007, they knew who to call to get the young cast on its feet.
This Is the Dawning: In her Hair program bio, Armitage (a Pisces with an Aquarius rising, in case you were wondering) reveals that “as a young 12-year-old hippie, she cut a hole in a beautiful American Indian rug and wore it.” As reactions to Hair go, that one seems pretty tame. “Oh, I loved the music,” she says, adding cheekily, “I learned a lot of vocabulary from the song ‘Sodomy.’” In the brief rehearsal period before the original Central Park concerts, Armitage worked out individual choreography for the 28 cast members. “I would take a song like ‘Going Down’ and say, ‘Do eight beats of being a devil, and make sure you hit this count with a strong accent,’” she explains. “We would develop the material until it looked good on them and then it would become fixed. Within the disorder, there’s a kind of order.” And if theatergoers watch the tribe and imagine that the actors thought up all those groovy moves themselves? “I find that to be a huge compliment,” Armitage says.
Broadway Newbie: Armitage confesses that she knows very little about traditional musical theater choreography; her near-constant travel schedule doesn’t allow time for keeping up with Broadway shows, and she hasn’t seen the work of any of her fellow Tony nominees. “I think it’s a great art form,” she says of musicals, “but I have so much to keep up with in my own world [of modern dance] and contemporary art and music. Both shows I’ve done have been kind of a fluke, but it’s been exciting to discover a new and interesting world.” She’s excited about attending her first Tony Awards ceremony, as well: “Peter Speliopoulos, who makes all of my company’s costumes, is the head designer for Donna Karan, so I’ve got pretty good dresses to choose from!”