‘Love’ and ‘Life’ Out of Doors

On Friday, the dynamic dance bill at Lincoln Center Out of Doors will feature the premiere of “Summer of Love” by Karole Armitage’s company, Armitage Gone!, along with a program of repertory pieces by Ronald K. Brown’s company, Evidence.“Summer of Love” fuses choreographer Ms. Armitage’s balletic energy with the West African pop of Burkina Electric, while Mr. Brown and Evidence will perform two works: “High Life,” an abstract piece that peaks with a tapestry of movement fueled by Fela Kuti’s fierce Afropop, and “Upside Down,” a story piece on migration, both physical and emotional.Since returning from Europe in 2005 Ms. Armitage has maintained an impressive workload, including the revival of “Hair” now at the Delacorte Theater in Central Park, and the rock musical “Passing Strange” on Broadway.On the phone with The New York Sun, Ms. Armitage commented on the “overlap of spirit” between “Summer of Love” and “Hair,” where movement emphasizes the story, words, and the songs. “There’s all of that in ‘Summer of Love,'” Ms. Armitage said, “but there’s extreme, intense, even violent dance that uses the body to an absolute maximum. And it’s wonderful because we have the Burkina Electric dancers who’ve learned traditional dances from the Congo, Burkina Faso, and South Africa. And my dancers are from every corner of the world, from Taiwan and Japan to Europe, so it truly is that utopian sharing of experience,” she said.Peter Speliopoulos’s costumes are inspired by Malian photographer Malick Cidbé, whose 1960s studio portraits Ms. Armitage finds “so full of life and imagination and what it means to be a young person who aspires to create their own vision of how the world is,” she said. “These kids dress in such a simple, powerful way.” Mr. Speliopoulos, who is the head designer at Donna Karan, visited a vintage to store to help outfit the dancers. “He found original clothes with patterns in this restricted palette of chocolate brown and white, with a few strong color accents,” Ms. Armitage said.The choreographer met Burkina Electric’s co-founder Lukas Ligeti when she returned to New York City after 15 years in Europe and presented an evening-length piece to the music of his father, the classical composer, Gyorgy Ligeti. They began working on a ballet based on Brian Greene’s book on string theory, “The Elegant Universe” (presented as work in progress at the Guggenheim in May), and when she heard his Burkina Electric project, the “Summer of Love” collaboration was born.On the phone from Venice, Mr. Ligeti said it’s rare for an African band to work with someone with Ms. Armitage’s ballet background. “For Burkina Electric, working with a choreographer from a very different tradition is really interesting, and it’s also challenging because she’s used to working in a way that everything is fixed, and we improvise a lot,” he said. Ms. Armitage selected tunes from the band’s concert rep, and near the end, two probing club remixes are played from laptops. “There are short passages when just the company is dancing,” Mr. Ligeti said, “and short passages when Burkina Electric is playing without the company. For the most part, it’s both together.”The evening will open with Mr. Brown and Evidence performing pieces selected for what Mr. Brown called “a theme in terms of the enculturation process. For ‘High Life,’ there’s the theme of migration, with people moving from the South to the North and the dedication to bringing your family and culture along with you,” he said. “The other thing that I felt was in line with the enculturation process was the music that came out of Ghana and West Africa, the music style called high life, which is West African music, South American music, jazz, those horns.”“Upside Down” indicates Evidence’s range and the company’s vibrant vigor, with Mr. Brown’s movement language a meld of flowing limbs and compact, centered gravity, punctuated by astutely contained leaps.“High Life” uses period dress to display its migration tale, where “Upside Down” is in spare, richly colored dance attire. Both pieces have crucial moments along bold stage diagonals. One soloist exits “Upside Down” on that diagonal with abrupt yet casual springs, as if a jazz singer were teasing at gutturals in her chest. In “High Life,” the characters’ valises are towed along a bar of light then left onstage, perhaps in deference to the adage “you can’t take it with you.”August 8 (62nd Street at Amsterdam Avenue, 212-721-6500).

‘Love’ and ‘Life’ Out of Doors

‘Love’ and ‘Life’ Out of Doors

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