Dance Performance and Conversation With Karole Armitage

On Wednesday February 24, dancers from Armitage Gone! Dance and students from Harvard University performed a short dance inspired by the exhibition, "Everywhen: The Eternal Present in Indigenous Art from Australia," in the Calderwood Courtyard of Harvard Art Museums. The dance was performed to "Didjerilayover," a composition by Stuart Dempster, featuring the evocative harmonics of the traditional Aboriginal instrument, the Didjeridu, which Mr. Dempster introduced to the US.

Following the performance, Lisa Mullins, host of All Things Considered, sat down with choreographer Karole Armitage, the 2015–16 Mildred Londa Weisman Fellow at Harvard University’s Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, to discuss how the exhibition inspired the dance. 
As a Radcliffe Fellow, Ms. Armitage is exploring ways to bring the unique point of view of indigenous cultures into contemporary performance, focusing on Aboriginal cultures of the Kimberley region in Australia and Plains Indian tribes in the United States. Collaborating with thinkers from inside and outside the academy—including from Haskell Indian Nations University— Ms. Armitage will focus on other ways of being, thinking, and orienting the self on the earth.
To learn more about the exhibition at Harvard Art Museums, click here.
Photos © Susan Young.
Dance Performance with Karole Armitage from Harvard Art Museums on Vimeo.