Karole Armitage

TE

It seems we have a similar point of departure with a shared background in classical ballet training. Then, your career took many turns as you learned and incorporated different techniques and traditions in your practice. How did you start dancing?

KA

Very young, I grew up in Lawrence, Kansas, where the University of Kansas is. My father was an ecologist there. A woman from New York City Ballet came to Lawrence when I was about four years old, and opened a dance studio. We’re talking the late 1950s, early ’60s when everyone wanted their daughters to get grace. So I was sent and I was just bitten. I immediately was like: I want to be an artist. I want to be on the nerve of culture and what it feels like to be alive.

TE

And you felt like it was an instant calling?

KA

Totally. I didn’t question it. It felt like freedom and glamor. It was spiritual and psychological and deep. And I had the right body. When it comes down to it, you’re born with the joints and muscles and proportions that make it work or not. I was lucky. Standing on point was comfortable.

TE

You started with ballet, but soon you started moving in modern and postmodern ways…

KA

I had started going to North Carolina School of the Arts for junior high, and I graduated very quickly because I'd had very strong academics in Kansas. Many from North Carolina School of the Arts were chosen by Balanchine to go to Geneva to become members of the company there. I was one of the dancers who made that journey. I was 17.

Balanchine became director of the ballet in Geneva because his heart was broken as Suzanne Farrell got married to Paul Mejia. He just didn’t want to spend all his time in New York. He wanted to go back to his European roots. So he was there. He was in and out. He taught us class. He worked with the orchestra. He did all the rehearsals on stage.

TE

What was he like?

KA

He just seemed like a very courtly older gentleman. It’s those very gracious European manners. The funny thing was that he would take all the girls in the company—we were about 27—to dinner for fondue. He was nothing but kind, delightful, and very gracious.

I loved doing what we called the leotard ballets: the modern Stravinskys or Hindemith’s Four Temperaments, Agon, Serenade. But I just felt like an imposter in a tutu in those more imperial ballets, like Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto No. 2. A Swiss friend told me about Merce Cunningham. I thought, I’m going to try modern dance. So I just up and left the company in Geneva in 1976 and went to New York with a bun. I had no idea what modern dance was. I took a class with Cunningham, and he asked me: what do you want to do? I said, I want to dance with you. And then I was in the company. It was all very quick.

TE

You’ve had the chance to work with so many of the major players of the late 20th century in dance when everything was being challenged and changed and re-created. Tell me about being in Merce’s company.

KA

Intellectually, I was extremely interested in all of the Cunningham concepts – the chance operations, moving in a different way, with a different center of gravity a little more grounded. But in retrospect, what was quite tough is that he would never speak to anyone. He said two sentences to me in five years. One was, “you need more tensile strength.” And the other was, “thank you, for the cheese," because I bought him some cheese in France one time.

It was his personality. There were no corrections. There was no interaction. I don’t think he could help it, but I believe in conversation. Part of dance is a meditation that’s very solitary, though you share it with people. It is wonderful to respect that, but a little bit of human interaction is also nice and helpful, especially for technique. You can’t do it by yourself.

TE

So much of the continued life of dance is about transmission through language. It’s about explaining from one generation to the next, or from one cast to the next, how things are done. That is how it survives. So it’s amazing to me that he was able to get away with all that he achieved by being so parsimonious with his words. After your time with the Cunningham company, what happened?

KA

Cunningham’s ideas were very much of the ’50s, the intellectual underpinnings, while punk was exploding. I was like, “no one’s doing this. No one’s doing things that are going on in the culture today.” I thought, “I’m just going to go into a studio and I’m going to try some things.”

I did this first piece that was the destruction of technique. It started with people who could move, and gradually, it melted down to an almost static and very pedestrian, tabula rasa kind of thing. I had a punk band that played really, really loud music. A burst every once in a while, very sparse. Christian Marclay designed the costumes and the environment. People just liked it. I wasn’t setting out to be a choreographer. Opportunities came.

TE

What was it like for you to be on the other side of the studio? Were you also performing in the pieces that you were choreographing?

KA

I believe you can’t be a good choreographer without being a really good dancer. To understand how the body moves and what the potential of it is, you have to know your own body. My body is my sketch pad, and I still use it that way. But I did realize after a while that I didn’t really know what it looked like from the outside, and that I needed to stop dancing in order to see it more objectively.

My first choreography was 1978. Then, I made about one piece a year, and in ’86, I formed a group. For three years, I was both dancing and performing until it just became impossible. In 1989, I stopped performing.

TE

When you’re choreographing, is ballet always your initial point of reference? Do you feel like you’re necessarily responding to classicism?

KA

I absolutely do. I like the deep, deep, deep understanding of the technology of the body that only ballet has. It’s much deeper than any other dance form. It’s 400 years of history, and it’s extreme. I like extremes. The poetry, refinement, articulation, technology. I am always seeing ballet in my ways of thinking about geometry and how to deploy the body.

The intellectual sides that come more from modern dance are also absolutely essential. For me, the most important thing about Cunningham was treating space as a field where things are happening simultaneously. There is not a hierarchy telling you where to look or who to look at. It’s about democracy. And I do think that the more vulgar influence of pop culture and street culture give a vitality that is really essential to art.

TE

You have spoken before about this idea that somehow dance is always kind of marginal, that it’s either misunderstood or underappreciated versus some other art forms where it seems more possible for there to be innovation. Why do you think that is?

KA

Strangely enough, dance can be slow to innovate. When you’re trained as a dancer, you’re trained to believe in so many principles. I was hated by the ballet world because I went to modern dance. That was a betrayal at that time. I was one of the first who ever did such a thing. I was such a black sheep. Then, the modern people hated me because I respected ballet. I was always caught by these opposing moralities.

When you’re in the most capitalist society in the world, and you do have something that does not make a dime, it’s very hard to be integrated. You are, by every cultural standard, totally marginalized. I think it just comes down to the fact that dance is a very expensive art, as well as one that is not literal or narrative. People, especially in the US, are really more literal minded and less metaphoric or poetically inclined. It’s just the way the culture has developed.

TE

How do you think your experiences working in Europe influenced your understanding of the value of dance, especially at such a formative time of your career?

KA

I was so young, in my very early 20s, when France really recognized what I was doing and offered me extraordinary opportunities, which gave me the courage to continue. France made me understand that there is a real, absolute continuity from Louis XIV to the punk world. They got it.

It’s thanks to Europe that I have been able to survive economically, and thanks to visual artists in New York who incredibly generously donated art to support the dance company. Those are the only two sources of income I’ve ever had.

TE

I would love to talk about some of your collaborations with visual artists: David Salle, Jeff Koons, Brice Marden, to name a few big ones. How did those come to be? Why do you think those figures took an interest in your work?

KA

I was known as the punk ballerina, so I’d made a mark. That led to me meeting these people who were doing extremely radical work. I saw that they were looking at the culture in a very different way than I was, but one that was exploding my mind. That’s what I like. I like discovery, and having my parameters opened up. All of their ways of combining very deep structure based on classical art with the influences of pop and advertising and Disney gave a real vitality to their work that I was quite interested in and interested in engaging with.

The first person I met was David Salle who is somebody who has an incredible ability to be fluent in almost any form of art. He just crosses boundaries very, very easily. David and I collaborated on many things. That brought to the stage a visual dazzle and complexity that I had never thought of. Then, I got to be really close with Jeff Koons for quite a while. His interest in eroticism was certainly one of my themes in my work. We had some very interesting conversations when he was first fascinated by Cicciolina and I was a go-between because I spoke a little bit of Italian.

TE

How come?

KA

After many years in France, I ended up living in Italy. I was the director of the ballet in Florence at the opera house, and then I lived in Naples for a couple of years, and I directed the Venice Biennale of contemporary dance. So I had a lot of Italian experience which profoundly influenced me.

TE

How so?

KA

Here’s the story. When I was in Florence, I lived in this most extraordinary 13th century refectory of a monastery where Da Vinci had traded a painting for olive oil. It belonged to Bernardo Bertolucci. I would invite Italian friends over to learn cooking from all regions of Italy. With Tuscan cooking, I realized: only essential ingredients, but the exact right ingredients and the exact right proportion of the ingredients. That affected my art, to really hone in on the essentials, to be more daring, to be purely poetic.

In Italy, the combination of science, geometry, mathematics, ideas and the poetic…liberated me to go further than I had before.

TE

Does your interest in science come from your father as an ecologist?

KA

It is absolutely because of my father and growing up in this very remote place, which was a biological laboratory. I mean, really, truly remote—a two hour drive to get groceries. But there were some of the most brilliant scientists of the time living there. They were so funny, they were so creative, they were so subversive, they were so everything that an artist is supposed to be. And also so responsible to the discipline of science, just like dancers are so responsible to the discipline of dance. There was a recognition that we share a common way of being.

TE

How do you include this thinking in your work?

KA

Let’s use the examples of fractals. I worked for many years trying to make a curvilinear, almost calligraphic dance language that was flowing from one shape to the next rather than abruptly taking shapes. It’s a different philosophy, a different look.

TE

We spoke about some visual artists that you called upon for sets and costumes. Others have called upon you. You have an epic roster of collaborators from over the years, including Madonna for the Vogue music video. Can you tell me about working with a figure like Madonna? What was she asking you to do or consider?

KA

I had been asked to become a judge in the really underground days of voguing. I went to many, many balls in the very early ’80s. I loved it. In some ways, I was the figure Madonna wanted to be. She knew about me. We met many years before we worked together. She would come to all of my performances. She liked the humor. She liked the subversiveness. She liked the depth of the dance idea, because she really knew what that was. She came to New York in order to be a dancer. Probably both her narcissism and her lack of technique led her to the pop music world.

I think her tremendous skill is that she knows when the general public—the vast public—is ready for a new idea. She suddenly thought: this is the time for vogue to be exported. So that’s when we started working together for the Vogue video.

TE

What about Michael Jackson?

KA

This is an epic story, and I’ll try to tell it in a few broad strokes. One day, I get this call. “Could you come to California now to work with Michael Jackson on this new video? “Naomi Campbell was to be his partner. I knew her already, because she’s very serious about dance. So Naomi and I are in the dance studio, and Michael won’t come. He never shows up, day after day. So I do Michael Jackson’s role with Naomi. In the meantime, she was having an affair with Robert De Niro who was circling the dance studio in his car. They had the two first cell phones on the planet, and they would talk to each other on the cell phone.

Finally, one day, Michael Jackson shows up at 2 a.m. We had been waiting for 12 hours in the studio. He got into it, and he was excited. But then he confessed to me that he had promised the role—this is what's so bizarre—to Princess Stephanie of Monaco. He didn’t want to dance with Naomi. The whole point of this song called In the Closet was to make him look heterosexual and in love with Naomi, but he wouldn’t touch her unless I, with my bull horn, shouted at him: GRAB HER ASS.

It was the most crazy story. He was so sweet, but he felt himself to be corrupt. He had a self loathing for how he was able to wield things over people. It was touching.

TE

When you’re choreographing, whether for pop stars or for dancers, what materials do you bring to the studio on day one? How much of the piece is set before you begin to work with dancers?

KA

There’s a kind of concept of what we’re aiming to do. There is a feeling, a tone, a kind of vocabulary. It’s not a story, but there’s an internal life that we are trying to capture.

TE

One of the things that I find amazing about some of your work is the way that the choreography looks organic. There’s something very unpredictable about the movement even while it’s programmatic.

KA

I always want it to feel like there is truly a kind of eroticism of simply gravity, molecules of the air. That sensuality, which makes it feel natural, is always a part of every detail of the movement. There’s not really improvisation. There are lots of mistakes. I love mistakes because that can lead to new ideas and revelations.

TE

What is your relationship to narrative, especially as you’ve done both popular work and more esoteric work. How do you think about narrative and dance?

KA

I like something that starts at one place, develops, and ends somewhere, so it’s an arc. But it’s never character driven, which narrative usually is. I feel there’s a real danger of narrative ruining dance, because it confines it to storytelling, confines it to character. I’m completely against that kind of narrative in dance. It’s an experience rather than a narrative.

TE

You’re still making work. You’ve alluded, in our conversation, to the idea that dance is hard. It’s hard to get support, it’s hard to get an audience. What drives you to continue to make work?

KA

I was lucky because I was around in this golden age of dance: Balanchine, Cunningham and downtown innovators. All of it was happening at once. It was quite extraordinary. To see it go so off a cliff toward extinction has been very painful as there’s been less support in every way. It disappeared from magazines, from the newspapers. There’s no criticism anymore. It’s that thing where if there’s no representation, it means that you don’t exist. And that really happened to dance during my lifetime. I’m really doing it because I still have enough physical energy and ability. I still love it.

TE

I danced for many years, and then I stopped for many years, and it really never left me, as trite as that sounds. I just don’t think I’m ever going to have a more abiding, serious passion in my life than dance. There’s just no other way of living for me.

KA

This is true of every single person who has ever been a serious dancer. People become doctors, people become lawyers, people become every kind of thing you can imagine in the world. There is something about dance. I think it’s because it uses every part of consciousness. It’s your emotion, your intellect, your psychology, your analytical ability, your ability to interact with others. It’s meditation. There’s just nothing else that’s quite so complete. I am still captive to it.

TE

Are you  conscious of your own artistic footprint or legacy? Is the reproduction or afterlife of your work something that you think about?

KA

One of the beauties of dance is it’s ephemeral. I expect my career to be very ephemeral. I think dance is of its time. It’s done by young people. You know, it’s of its moment. I don’t expect it to last.

I learned a little bit about archival ideas, because, in the art world, they know it deeply. I worked with those artists and I learned, “oh, you should have photos.” I never thought of having a photo. It just never occurred to me. I tried to maintain a little bit of information on the website, even for my own memory.

TE

And what about through film or writing? I'm curious to hear about the way that your dance practice is approached through other artistic expressions and modes of recording.

KA

I got extremely interested in the idea of screen dance, as people call it. I worked with my dancers with gimbals and lenses to capture completely new perspectives on dance—like filming the dancers only from underneath so you see the body from completely different angles. That is something I’m really interested in. It’s turning dance into a visual art that’s a product, not a performance.

I like the potential of it, you know, of everything not being so ephemeral. At this point, as performances disappear, as audiences disappear, you know you have to adapt to your culture. Screen dance now is my main focus.

TE

What’s the status of your company? How many dancers are there? Are you guys operational?

KA

Two years ago, I just decided it’s hopeless. I can’t keep a company going. There’s not an audience, there’s no support, there’s no media. When you have to work at such a punishing level to find a way that people know about it, to go to a performance, this is too much. I’m not going to punish myself this much anymore.

I did a last season, and now I am working with my dancers on these film projects. Every single role is done by a dancer, from costume design to the camera operation to the dance. Dancers are very disciplined. Dancers can do it all. Dancers are very aware. Dancers are so talented in so many ways.

TE

This has been a real pleasure.

KA

I want to say one thing.

TE

Tell me, yes, please.

KA

One of the people I worked with was Marc Jacobs. It was fantastic to work with him because whenever I did a few moves that I had doubts about, he would instantly see it and go, “No, that’s not it.” There was such an extraordinary observation.

TE

In what capacity did you guys work together? I think there was a runway a couple years ago, right?

KA

Yes, exactly. There were 80 models and 60 dancers. It was gigantic at the Park Avenue Armory. It was really fantastic. Marc is a nut. We were supposed to work normal hours, long hours. We ended up having to work all night, every night. We had to sleep there, on the floor. It was just crazy, but it was great.

TE

Because he was demanding or because the project was so enormous?

KA

He will not make decisions on what the clothes are until he is pushed against the wall at the very last minute. No one had any clothes to wear six hours before the show. We had to stay up all night for him to decide and fit people.

TE

I have to ask about one more collaboration, which is Baryshnikov.

KA

I love him. Talk about smart and understanding of culture and the body. Though, he has limitations on his understanding of contemporary dance, because for him, American modern dance was the only way to understand anything contemporary. The melding of ballet technique with modern dance ideas with street influences is something that he doesn’t understand. But I loved working with him—such a personality, as well as, a mind and body of incredible articulation and beauty.