The sex pistol

Strange as it sounds, Karole Armitage has never revived a dance. For the next two weeks, however, she is fully embracing her past—and, notably, her “punk ballerina” status—to present a program of three landmark dances from the ’80s (Drastic Classicism, The Watteau Duets and Wild Thing), as well as the premiere of Mashup. For Armitage, who continues to push and play with classical vocabulary, the time was right: “I started thinking: war in Iraq, Bush presidency, corporate greed out of control,” she says. “Before punk started, England was a great colonial power losing its esteem in the world. The parallels with the U.S. are really interesting—with our imperialism through Bush.” Below, Armitage sheds some light on her upcoming season at the Kitchen.

Photographs: Julieta Caerantes and Paula Court

The Watteau Duets, 1985 (music by David Linton) “It’s the evolution of a couple, and it’s also a history of music. It starts out with medieval and baroque influences, but all rock & rollified—the couple moves through the same kind of territory. I think of the first duet as, Oh, this is the guy you’ve always wanted to go out with. In the second, you’ve gotten to know each other and you’re having fun. And the third is getting ready to sleep together—it’s a little more introspective and almost geishalike in places.” (Pictured: Megumi Eda and Bennyroyce Royon)

“In the fourth movement of The Watteau Duets, the erotic part is full force. The couple disappears for a little while and you realize: They’ve done it. [Laughs] And the fifth movement is like fast-forward—now we’re in a relationship with a whole other set of twisted, weird and neurotic complications. The sixth movement is mostly the musicians doing their thing. There’s no conclusion, but you’ve seen a big story.” (Pictured: Megumi Eda and Luke Manley)

Mashup: “I’m always very tongue-tied about new pieces, but what’s a little punk-influenced about it is that it takes music by Mozart and mashes it with X-Ray Spex’s “Oh Bondage, Up Yours!”—my favorite pop band of 1976. I think they had one record and it has this crazy saxophone in it. It was a very distinct sound and full of jubilation. It’s the jubilation of rebellion, basically just as in the Mozart: that driving, celebratory joy of life.” (Pictured: Kristina Bethel and Bennyroyce Royon)

“I wanted to be Suzanne Farrell. And I wasn’t. So I always felt I was not even close to being a good dancer, but I did really have a lot of strength and technique—much more than I ever imagined.” (Pictured: Armitage herself in The Watteau Duets)

Drastic Classicism, 1981 (music by Rhys Chatham) “Drastic was a jolt to the system. I just thought it was time to do something different: How can ballet become a hard-rock experience? What kind of movements could have that energy, that spontaneity, that unpredictable, wild volatility that is so exciting in rock, and yet all of [dance’s] discipline? We gave earplugs to everyone in the audience and aspirin. That was part of the theatrical joke.”

Armitage Gone! Dance: “Think Punk!” is at The Kitchen through Mar 14.

NEXT: an interview with choreographer Karole Armitage >>

How did you approach reviving these ’80s works?
It was confusing at first because I didn’t know: Should I be slavish to the original and just absolutely try to reproduce it as authentically as possible, with every step; or, as if you were editing a book the second time around, make little adjustments? I went, “I should make little adjustments.” [Laughs] It’s not like Henry James—who totally rewrote the early novels—but you have skills that you didn’t have when you were first starting out. I couldn’t help but employ them a little bit, to just tighten, make spacing better, give moments more rhythmic drive. And then the other thing is that you have a generation of dancers who have no information about that era. New York is completely and totally a different universe. Then, it was cheap. There was no idea of celebrity. It was all about working together because it was fun and lofts were cheap; you just kind of went to a friend’s loft, plugged in a guitar and played around. No one can live like that anymore. I had been through Balanchine and Cunningham. In the Cunningham company, we shared the whole aesthetic experience of years of dancing together every day with a very specific philosophy. Everyone in Cunningham was basically a WASP. It was one very unified, Protestant sort of puritanical culture: How do you bring all of that information to people? And try to re-create the same feeling of what liberation from that was? I don’t know how to do that exactly. I just felt I had to really work with the people I had and not be artificial. I want to bring who they are into the pieces. Which I think dance always does. Of course, if you think of Balanchine, he would make different steps to the same music. That is going on, too—absolutely being sensitive to, and excited by, the dancers who are performing the works now.

Did people really not care about celebrity and success then?
I don’t think so. I was really naive, but it wasn’t like it is today. I don’t think people were as self-conscious. The culture was less success-oriented and there was still a counterculture, so to be marginal meant you had a role in society, whereas it’s much tighter now. It’s either you’re successful or you’re not. It’s not like, “Oh, we’re part of a group that lives in a different way.” I am a rebel at heart and it’s just so strange in this country to be marginalized. It feels bad, rather than as if you’re doing something interesting. I guess you see some people make decisions based on box-office reasons and celebrity, and people just have to because they’re scrambling to survive. But I don’t think it’s ideal.

It’s important that these works are going to be revived for another generation—not to dance, but to watch. That was the other thing: There’s already no history in dance, but in our society history just evaporates. And memory and history are so important to making society change and for creating a better world. If you don’t know the past, how can you understand how power is being used? Again I thought, It’s just good that the U.S. becomes more conscious of the importance of things over time and not just the new. I mean, that wasn’t in my reasoning, but let’s just say that I think that is an important factor now that I’ve done it; I’m glad to be thinking about history.

How do you pass on this material, which as I understand it was raw and so suited to your own dancing?
It’s working on the rhythm, working on the shapes, talking a little bit about content—not too much because you want people to also find it for themselves. But guiding them with that; it’s just the well-placed word now and then. I guess it’s what directors do in theater, to help develop the character, really. I believe in not saying too much, because I certainly don’t want it to ever become actory or trying to be overly one thing. I really want the dancers to feel spontaneous and alive; they have to really find it for themselves, but then be very secure in the music and the steps and the structure. I think it’s really getting dancers to the point where they’re incredibly free. I was a little tough on a couple today because they just have to go further. We haven’t had a lot of time, so I’m asking a lot of them, but they have to be as interesting as possible. That’s just the job.

Did you talk to the dancers about the time in which the works were made?
A little bit. I tried to explain a little bit about what the world was like then, but I think it’s possible that I should have done more of that. I don’t know. That’s what’s all confusing to me about this whole process, because dance, in a funny way, is in time and out of time at once. It’s still built on classical ballet technique; then, it’s how you take that and warp and massage it and make it into something, image-wise, that’s very different than how people think it looks. But still using all of that knowledge and concept. So, in a way, it’s not as much about the times as it is about my own thinking about how the evolution of dance can work. The dancers have been confused. Are they supposed to be ballet dancers? Are they supposed to be Billy Forsythe? I think they’ve gotten over that, but it was hard for them to come up with an image at first; when I made these dances, they were barely born. In a way I’m trying to get them to understand the time and culture more through dance than through talking about the cultural moment.

What do you have in common with Forsythe?
I think, basically, we had the same idea and developed it in slightly different ways. There were a lot of parallels. I wanted to be very off-balance, adding warping and twisting to movement. Nothing about being placed; putting a rock & roll energy and punch and just a wilder intensification of accent. So it’s like drum beats with your body rather than a harp; that was really very similar. What I think was partly different is how he, being a man, approached a lot of that through partnering—how to get a girl off balance in that way or how to whip her around. I was thinking about it more from the ballerina’s point of view: What you do with your own body to create new shapes and new rhythms? [Mutters] Boy is that ever masculine and feminine psychology, too. It’s just a different way that we are more introspective, probably in general. I believe there is just a huge difference between the sexes. [Laughs]

Did you care about Twyla Tharp when you were younger?
It was her earlier work that I felt really interested in. When that success thing—she was like, How do I survive, how do I draw a bigger audience?—was more prevalent, it wasn’t the thing that I was most interested in. Basically, I’m just a marginal, intellectual sort of rebel. I really am. I’m not a mainstream kind of person. [Laughs] Ultimately, that’s a gift. Here I am doing two Broadway shows in a row [Passing Strange and Hair] so it’s pretty contradictory, but I’m doing my thing and not trying to conform to an idea of what is “successful.” I’m not interested in success from that point of view. And it’s just who I am. It’s not a value judgment. I’m enjoying doing these Broadway things: They’re great and interesting, but I wasn’t setting out to do them; people selected me for being who I was. I think that’s the way I’ve always chosen to live and I just think probably, as an artist, it’s a better way because you get to do what you want to do! [Laughs]

You’re rehearsing Hair now, right?
Hair in the morning. Punk in the afternoon. It’s pretty funny.

Is the label punk ballerina a burden or a point of pride?
[Shrugs] I say use it. What I still like about it is that it has that wonderful contradiction in it—the punk and the ballerina—and that’s not wrong. If there were a new counterculture, it might be nice to have a different name, but there isn’t one really. Right? There’s no thing like punk even. There was hip-hop but everything gets sucked up by the advertising game so quickly that you can’t even be a counter movement until it’s immediately digested and part of a jingle. Things move too quickly now or it just disappears. I’m really excited to be doing this show. At first, I just didn’t know if I could pull it off. That’s what I was most scared about: Can I do this? And now I know I can.

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