Karole Armitage

Dance company: Armitage Gone! Dance
Choreographer: Karole Armitage

Live music: Burkina Electric and band member Lukas Ligeti
Costumes designer: Peter Speliopoulos
Set designer: Philip Taaffe

Dates: Nov 6 & 7
Times: 7:30pm
Where: BAM Howard Gilman Opera House
Tickets: $20, 30, 35, 45

Length of the performance: 70min, no intermission

“Armitage is always pushing the limits of possibility, spectacularly deconstructing the body with a diabolic flair.” —Le Nouvel Observateur (France)

Whether choreographing works for Mikhail Baryshnikov or Michael Jackson; for the Paris Opera Ballet or Broadway (Hair, Passing Strange), former “punk ballerina” Karole Armitage is known for her edgy, unbridled energy and hyper-kinetic take on the contemporary zeitgeist.

For the US premiere of ITUTU, Armitage collaborates with African pop band

Lukas Ligeti

Burkina Electric and band member/composer Lukas Ligeti to create a haunting yet unabashedly festive fusion of dance and live music. Club electronica and ancient Burkinabé rhythms combine with off-kilter ballet and traditional African dance as Burkina Electric performs onstage with the Armitage Gone! Dance company, creating a world in which the modern and the traditional, the pop and the spiritual co-exist in a celebratory meeting ground.

With live music by Burkina Electric and band member Lukas Ligeti
Costumes designed by Peter Speliopoulos
Set design by Philip Taaffe

ITUTU was created with lead commissioning support from the L’ E. A. R. Teatro Massimo Vincenzo Bellini di Catania in Catania, Italy. The work received its World Premiere with the title Summer of Love on May 21, 2009 at Teatro Bellini. Additional commissioning support was provided by the BAM 2009 Next Wave Festival and Lincoln Center for Lincoln Center Out of Doors.

Audio: KadmusArts Interviews Lukas Ligeti (click on it)
Lukas Ligeti, bandleader of Burkina Electric, speaks with KadmusArts about cultural fusion, integrating electronics into his music, and collaborating with Karole Armitage on Itutu

Lukas Ligeti’s anouncement

Dear All,

This week, I have some performances coming up that should be really great! “Itutu”, the collaboration between my band Burkina Electric and choreographer Karole Armitage and her group, Armitage Gone! Dance, will be premiered at the BAM Next Wave Festival.

We (= Burkina Electric) have been working on this piece with Karole for well over a year now. A sneak preview was performed in August 2008 at Lincoln Center Out of Doors and received rave reviews (see below). We premiered the first official version of the piece, still entitled “Summer of Love”, at the Teatro Massimo Vincenzo Bellini in Catania, Sicily in May of 2009. For these upcoming BAM performances, we have completely revised the piece and now consider it complete. It has a new title, “Itutu”, meaning “mystic coolness” in Yoruba. There are changes in the music and in the choreography, as well as brand new costumes and beautiful backdrops by Peter Speliopoulos and Philip Taaffe, respectively. I’m very happy with where this collaboration has come – a total synthesis of ballet and African dance, together with our wildly mixed music and some very remarkable visuals. In addition to Burkina Electric’s repertoire, the music also includes 2 pieces from my solo electronic percussion repertoire and 2 remixes of Burkina Electric’s music by other artists, Raz Mesinai (Badawi) and Stefan Schneider (Mapstation).

Burkina Electric’s first full-length CD, “PASPANGA”, will be released by Cantaloupe Music in January 2010!! But it will already be on sale, pre-release, at the shows at BAM. This will be the only opportunity to obtain a copy of Paspanga before it is officially released, so please come and be among the first to pick it up! We are very proud of this CD.

Burkina Electric will perform live with Armitage Gone! Dance.
Burkina Electric: Wende K. Blass (guitar), Maï Lingani (vocals, dance), Lukas Ligeti (electronics, drums), Pyrolator (electronics), Zoko Zoko (dance), Vicky (dance).

On Friday, there will be a post-performance talk with Karole Armitage.

For more information, tickets, etc., please see