Known for her eclectic, collaborative and innovative works, contemporary dance choreographer Karole Armitage and her NYC-based company, Armitage Gone! Dance, present “The Art of In-Between.” Accompanied by live music performed on pre-columbian instruments, Armitage presents a joyful and subversive performance inspired by Mexican traditions such as Dia de Los Muertos and the theatrical wrestling form of Lucha Libre, evoking everything from pre-columbian traditions to contemporary minimalism and even drag performance.

The evening opens with Dia de Muertos – a joyful, subversive comedy that draws on the renowned Mexican holiday rooted in indigenous observances dating back to Mexica (Aztec) times. A devil morphs into rooster to become a human dancing skeleton. A group of skeletons frolic with punk attitude and visual high-jinx: bones dance alone, skeletons turn into musical instruments.  Armitage pairs this thrilling dance piece with music by jazz pianist Fats Waller, rapper Wyclef Jean, and music inspired by New York’s punk scene in the 70’s.

The piece continues with Donkey Jaw Bone, inspired by the theatrical wrestling form of Lucha Libre. At the border of sport, dance and ritual, this piece invokes connections and blurs distinctions between rural and urban, tradition and modernity, ritual and parody, machismo and feminism, politics and spectacle.

Music is performed live on pre-Columbian instruments, the teponaztli (a pitched slit-log drum), the huehuetl (an upright tubular drum), ayoyotes (an Aztec percussion instrument made from the shells of the ayoyote tree tied around the ankle), the quijada, (a donkey jawbone) and the jarana (a guitar like instrument from the Veracruz region of Mexico).

Armitage Gone! Dance Company Members:

Ahmaud Culver, Megumi Eda, Sierra French, Alonso Guzman, Yusaku

Komori, Cristian Laverde-Koenig

Musicians: Peter Basil Bogdanos, Juan Lucero

Costume Design: Pilar Limosner

Light Design: Clifton Taylor

This presentation is possible thanks to the support of National Sawdust