Halloween Unleashed: Dancing Bones, Tasting Darkness and the Skeleton Within
World Premiere
By Armitage Gone! Dance, New York City
Choreographed by Karole Armitage
Original Commissioned Music by Terry Dame
Music by DNA, Theoretical Girls, Wyclef Jean, Marilyn Manson, David Lang, Fats Waller
Tony Nominated Punk Ballerina Karole Armitage creates a gritty street influenced comedy on the delights of Halloween with her company, Armitage Gone! Dance. Designed to appeal to adults as well as to young people and their families, the dancers and puppets move to a musical cornucopia including NoWave New York punk, Wyclef Jean, Fats Waller, a Ray Bradbury text and original music by Terry Dame. Costumes and an installation are by fashion designer, Peter Speliopoulos with additional costumes by Jon Cos Coskunses, member of the Madame Secretary costume design team and artist Simone Duff. The production mixes influences from Disney’s 1929 herky-jerky animation and the Haitian Carnival.
Tony winning choreographer Karole Armitage took time out from rehearsals for the show to answer our 6 Questions on the La MaMa Blog about her inspirations for the show, its musical influences and the film A Ghost Story.
CREATIVE TEAM
Costumes and Installation:
Peter Speliopoulos
Cat, Bat, Owl, Witch, Deconstruct Skeletons:
Jon Can Coskunses
Mask and Prop Design:
Simone Duff
Lighting Design:
Clifton Taylor
Stage Manager:
Jessie Ksanzak
Wardrobe Manager:
Blythe Colombo
Armitage Gone! Dancers:
Edgar Clausse
Ahmaud Culver
Megumi Eda
Sierra French
Yusaku Komori
Cristian Laverde-Koenig
Over the past 30 years, Armitage and her dancers have shaped the evolution of contemporary dance through the creation and performance of new works. The most recent incarnation of the company, Armitage Gone! Dance (AG!D), was launched in 2004 when Armitage returned to the U.S. after 15 years of working abroad. The core of the company’s work centers on a series of dance ‘dreamscapes’ that take the viewer on a poetic journey to evoke mysterious landscapes of reverie, dream and altered consciousness.
Find out more on their website.
‘Some Screwball Surrealism for Halloween’ – by Gia Kourlas
“Ligeti Essays makes me think of thin ice—not just because it can be risky, but because it often seems on the verge of thawing. Its shifts are as piercing as those in the music….creating a climate of “strange, beautiful, awkward… This is a world in flux.”
– Deborah Jowitt, The Village Voice, 2006
“One of the most beautiful dances to be seen in New York in a very long time”
– Deborah Jowitt, New York Times. 2004