Program Notes - Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago

Photo: Julieta Cervantes 

Armitage Gone! Dance 

Thursday– 

Saturday, 

April 26–28, 

2012 

Edlis Neeson 

Theater


Karole Armitage, Artistic 

Director 

Company 

Sara Beery 

Megumi Eda 

Sean Hilton 

Abbey Roesner 

Bennyroyce Royon 

Marlon Taylor-Wiles 

Emily Wagner 

Mei-Hua Wang 

Jacob Michael Warren 

Masayo Yamaguchi 

Alexandra Greenwald, 

Company Manager 

Christina Johnson, 

Rehearsal Director 

Hong Chen, Stage Manager 

Clifton Taylor, 

Lighting Designer 

GAGA-Gaku (2011) 

Music: Lois V Vierk, 五 Guitars 

(Go Guitars) and Red Shift 

Lighting Design: Clifton Taylor 

Costumes: 132 5. Issey Miyake 

Lanterns: David Salle 

Dancers: Sara Beery, Megumi 

Eda, Sean Hilton, Abbey 

Roesner, Bennyroyce Royon, 

Marlon Taylor-Wiles, Emily 

Wagner, Mei-Hua Wang, Jacob 

Michael Warren, Masayo 

Yamaguchi 

GAGA-Gaku draws upon 

the mysterious worlds of 

Cambodian court dance, 

Japanese Noh Theater, and 

Balinese dance. The music is 

rooted in gagaku, the ancient 

court music of Japan. Antonin 

Artaud wrote in On The 

Balinese Theater in 1931 that 

“the drama does not develop 

as a conflict of feelings but of 

states of mind—portraying 

the unleashing of cosmic forces 

and chaos waiting behind 

the mask of order we try to 

impose on life. It is an internal 

conflict.” Composer Lois V 

Vierk is a student of gagaku. 

Issey Miyake’s origami-based 

costumes are conceived 

in collaboration with a computer 

scientist and made 

with recycled materials. 

五 Guitars (Go Guitars) by Lois V 

Vierk was recorded by 

guitarist Seth Josel at Trace 

Elements Records in NYC, and 

engineered by Robert M. Poss. 

This recording originally 

appeared on Josel’s portrait CD 

Go Guitars (O.O. Discs). 

Red Shift by Lois V Vierk was 

recorded by Ted Mook, cello; 

Dave Seidel, electric guitar; 

James Pugliese, percussion; Lois V 

Vierk, synthesizer. From 

Tzadik CD 7056, used by permission 

of Tzadik. 

Intermission 

The Watteau Duets 

(1985/2009) 

Original Score: David Linton, 

The Simpleton’s Guide to the 

World’s Greatest Music 


Costumes: Charles Atlas and 

Peter Speliopoulos 

Dancers: Abbey Roesner, 

Marlon Taylor-Wiles (April 26); 

Emily Wagner, Sean Hilton 

(April 27 and April 28) 

Musicians: TALIBAM! Matt 

Mottel and Kevin Shea 

The title for The Watteau Duets 

is a nod to French artist Jean- 

Antoine Watteau whose eighteenth-century 

paintings depict 

characters in the comedy of 

love. In Armitage’s twentiethcentury 

look at the subject, the 

idealized baroque vision of 

the delight is turned into what 

the French call an apache 

dance—a battle of the sexes 

depicted as a war dance with a 

sense of humor. Once ethereal, 

pointe shoes now are used as 

weapons. David Linton’s score 

was among the first to use 

sampling, mixing live music 

with recorded track. 

Intermission 

Drastic-Classicism 

(1981/2009) 

Original Score: Rhys Chatham, 

Drastic-Classicism 


Costumes: Peter Speliopoulos 

and Karen Young 

Dancers: Sara Beery, Megumi

Artists Up Close 

Eda, Sean Hilton, Abbey 

Roesner, Bennyroyce Royon, 

Marlon Taylor-Wiles, Emily 

Wagner, Mei-Hua Wang, Jacob 

Michael Warren, Masayo 

Yamaguchi 

Musicians: Steve Gunn, Matt 

Mottel, Kevin Shea, Shelly 

Steffens, Mike Vallera 

When Drastic-Classicism, 

one of Armitage’s signature 

works, premiered in New York 

thirty years ago it shocked 

audiences with its audacity: 

pairing ballet movement with 

the raw energy of punk’s wall 

of sound, rendered by Rhys 

Chatham. Yet, as Arlene Croce 

wrote at the time, “[c]lassical 

values that were flayed alive, 

stayed alive.” 

Armitage Gone! Dance’s 2011–2012 

Season is supported with public 

funds from the National 

Endowment for the Arts, New York 

State Council for the Arts, New 

York City Department of Cultural 

Affairs, The Fan Fox and Leslie 

R. Samuels Foundation, Shubert 

Foundation, LLWW Foundation, 

Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation, 

Richard J. Massey Foundation for 

Arts and Sciences, Jerome Robbins 

Foundation, and others. 

This series brings together MCA Stage artists with the public 

over a variety of intimate conversations and training opportunities 

to provide insight into the creative process. 

First Night 

Thursday, April 26 

Following the opening-night performance, audience members are 

invited to join an insightful discussion with Karole Armitage, led by 

Peter Taub, Director of Performance Programs. 

Talk 

Saturday, April 28, 2 pm 

Karole Armitage and visual artist David Salle discuss their own 

works as well as collaborations with each other, and bring perspective 

to the climate and politics of art and dance in the 1980s 

and today. Salle’s paintings are in the current MCA exhibition, 

This Will Have Been: Art, Love & Politics in the 1980s. This rare 

public conversation is moderated by This Will Have Been guest 

curator Helen Molesworth. Tickets are $10, or $6 for students. 

Saturday Speakeasy 

April 28 

Following the performance, audience members are invited 

to mingle with the company in the lobby, with a cash bar and 

snacks available.

Dance 

Luna Negra 

Dance Theater 

Luna Nueva 

June 7–10, 2012 

Copresented with 

Luna Negra Dance Theater 

“Luna Negra’s dancers are 

in bravura form—fluid, 

bold, intense, funny and 

highly individualistic.” 

Chicago Sun-Times 

For tickets, visit mcachicago.org or call 312.397.4010. 

Photo: Jonathan Mackoff

About the Artists 


was formed in 2001, when Karole Armitage 

returned to the United States after fifteen years 

of working in Europe. For the first two years, the 

company created one production annually for 

seven dancers. This culminated in the creation 

of the company’s acclaimed ballet Time is 

the echo of an axe within a wood. Armitage 

Gone! Dance was officially launched in 2004 

with an unprecedented three-week season at 

the Duke on 42nd Street Theater, followed by 

a commissioned dance for Works & Process 

at the Guggenheim Museum. The excitement 

generated by these engagements led to 

performances in Italy, France, and Mexico, 

and then to tours throughout the United States 

and Europe for the next several years. In 2010, 

Armitage Gone! Dance became the ten-member 

company it is today. 

Armitage formed her first company, Armitage 

Gone!, in New York City in 1979 to critical 

acclaim. The company toured to festivals 

and venues worldwide, taking the name The 

Armitage Ballet in 1985, to perform works in 

collaboration with visual artists David Salle and 

Jeff Koons. Throughout the 1990s, Armitage 

chose to maintain her company on a project 

basis while accepting commissions from 

European ballet and opera companies. Armitage 

Gone! Dance has received a number of 

prestigious awards and commissions including 

two National Dance Project Awards, support 

from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, 

a Multi-Arts Production Fund Award, and 

commissions from the Guggenheim’s Works and 

Process program, The Joyce Theater’s Cathy 

and Stephen Weinroth Fund for New Works, 

the Teatro Massimo Vincenzo Bellini di Catania, 

in Italy, Lincoln Center for Lincoln Center Out 

of Doors, Napoli Teatro Festival Italia, BAM 

for the 2009 Next Wave Festival, the Krannert 

Center for the Performing Arts at the University 

of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the Hopkins 

Center, Dartmouth College, and a commission 

for a new work from SummerStages for 

performances in Central Park. The company’s 

fall 2011 tour in Europe featured a ten-year 

retrospective of work. 

Karole Armitage 

is trained in classical ballet and began her professional 

career in 1973 as a member of the 

Ballet du Théâtre de Genève, Switzerland, a 

company devoted exclusively to the repertory 

of George Balanchine. In 1976, she was invited 

to join Merce Cunningham’s company, where 

she remained for five years, performing leading 

roles in Cunningham’s landmark works. 

Armitage created her first piece in 1978, followed 

by Drastic-Classicism in 1981. Throughout 

the 1980s, she led her own New York–based 

dance company, Armitage Ballet. Following 

the premiere of The Watteau Duets at Dance 

Theater Workshop, Mikhail Baryshnikov invited 

her to create a work for the American Ballet 

Theater, and Rudolph Nureyev commissioned a 

work for the Paris Opera Ballet. She continued 

to work both in Europe and the United States 

until 1996 when she was appointed Director of 

Maggiodanza in Florence, Italy. From 1999 to 

2004 she was the resident choreographer of 

Ballet de Lorraine in France, and in 2005 served 

as Director of the Venice Biennale Festival of 

Contemporary Dance. Her work continues to 

tour throughout the continent, performed by 

several European companies. After her company’s 

successful season at the Joyce in 2004, 

Armitage’s focus returned to her New York– 

based company.

Photo: Julieta Cervantes

Known as the “punk ballerina,” Armitage creates 

works that blend dance, music, and 

art and are inspired by disparate, non-narrative 

sources, from twentieth-century physics 

to sixteenth-century Florentine fashion, to pop 

culture and new media. She injects the classic 

vocabulary with speed, fractured lines, 

abstractions, and symmetry countermanded 

by asymmetry. She uses music as her script, 

frequently collaborating with contemporary 

and experimental composers such as Rhys 

Chatham, Vijay Iyer, Lukas Ligeti, and John 

Luther Adams, whose scores can be marked by 

extreme lyricism as well as dissonance, 

noise, and polyrhythms. The sets and costumes 

for her works are often designed by leading 

artists in the contemporary art world, including 

Jeff Koons, David Salle, Phillip Taaffe, and 

Brice Marden. 

As a true post-modernist, Armitage resides in 

both the esoteric and the popular, having 

choreographed two Broadway productions 

(Passing Strange and Hair, which garnered her 

a Tony® nomination), videos for Madonna and 

Michael Jackson, and several Merchant-Ivory 

films. In 2009, she was awarded France’s most 

prestigious award, Commandeur Dans L’orde 

Des Arts Et Des Lettres. 

She has choreographed new works for the 

Bolshoi Ballet in Moscow, American Ballet 

Theatre, the Paris Opera Ballet, White 

Oak Dance Project, the Deutsch Opera Berlin, 

the Bayerische Staatsoper in Munich, Les 

Ballets de Monte Carlo, Lyon Opera Ballet, 

Ballet Nacional de Cuba, the Washington 

Ballet, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, 

the Kansas City Ballet, the Bern Ballet 

and the Rambert Dance Company. She has 

directed operas from the baroque and 

contemporary repertoire for prestigious houses 

of Europe, including Teatro di San Carlo in 

Naples, Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris, the Lyric 

Opera in Athens, and Het Muzik Theater in 

Amsterdam. She choreographed The Cunning 

Little Vixen, directed by Doug Fitch, in 2011, for 

the New York Philharmonic. 

Her work has been the subject of two documentaries 

made for television: The South 

Bank Show (1985), directed by David Hinton, 

and Wild Ballerina (1988), directed by 

Mark Kidel. Upcoming projects include choreography 

for AmaLuna, the 2012 tent show 

by Cirque du Soleil. 

Rhys Chatham 

is originally from Manhattan, where he was 

the founder of the music program at The 

Kitchen. A composer, guitarist, and trumpet 

player, he is considered a founder of a 

fusion of the overtone-drenched minimalism 

of John Cale and Tony Conrad with the 

relentless elemental guitar of the Ramones. 

With Guitar Trio (1977), he was the first 

composer to make use of multiple electric 

guitars in special tunings to merge the 

extended-time music of the sixties and seventies 

with serious hard rock. This pursuit culminated 

in 1989 with the composition and performance 

of his first symphony for an orchestra of one 

hundred electric guitars, An Angel Moves Too 

Fast to See. He subsequently composed 

other works for large guitar orchestra, including 

A Crimson Grail in 2009 (written for 200 

guitars and 16 bass), which was released on 

Nonesuch Records in 2010. Chatham first 

worked with Karole Armitage in 1981 and has 

been based in Paris since 1987.

Christina Johnson 

was born in Vienna, Austria, and began dance 

studies at the age of seven. She trained at the 

Boston School of Ballet, the School of American 

Ballet, and the Dance Theatre of Harlem. Her 

professional debut with the Boston Ballet was 

followed by Dance Theatre of Harlem, where 

she rose to become a principal dancer during 

her thirteen-year tenure and performed leading 

roles in Swan Lake, Giselle, Firebird, Prodigal 

Son, and The Four Temperaments. Johnson has 

worked with choreographers such as Jerome 

Robbins, Frederic Franklin, Suzanne Farrell, 

and Sir Anthony Dowell. As a member of Le 

Ballet du Grand Théâtre de Genève and Ballet 

Basel, her repertoire expanded with works by 

William Forsyth, Jiri Kylian, James Kudelka, 

Ohad Naharin, Jean-Christophe Maillot, Twyla 

Tharp, Amanda Miller, and David Parsons, to 

name a few. She has been a featured guest 

artist with the Royal Ballet of London and other 

companies. Johnson is a founding member of 

Complexions Contemporary Ballet and made 

her Broadway debut in The Red Shoes. 

Her teaching, coaching, and ballet master 

career includes work with companies such as 

the Washington Ballet, Pittsburgh Ballet Theater, 

Joffery Ballet, Alvin Ailey American Dance 

Theater, Dance Theatre of Harlem, Complexions 

Contemporary Ballet, North Carolina Dance 

Theater, Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet, 

Gotesborg Ballet, Ballet Basel, and Les Ballets 

Trockadero de Monte Carlo. She was rehearsal 

director for Cedar Lake Contemporary 

Ballet from 2005 to 2006. She joined Armitage 

Gone! Dance as rehearsal director in 2010, 

and is on the guest faculty at the Princeton 

Dance and Theater Studio and at Greenwich 

Ballet Academy. 

Issey Miyake 

was born in Hiroshima, Japan, in 1938. He 

established the Miyake Design Studio in 

1970 and started to show his line at the Paris 

Collections in 1973. Miyake’s tenets for making 

clothes has always been the idea of creating 

a garment from one piece of cloth and the 

exploration of the space between the human 

body and the cloth that covers it. His approach 

to design is to strike a consistent balance 

between tradition and innovation, handcrafts 

and new technology. 132 5. Issey Miyake 

is his new creative challenge based on the 

ideas of regeneration and Re-creation 

and a continuation of his perpetual search for 

new ways by which to make “clothes that 

bring joy and happiness to wearers.” 


is a native of Springfield, Massachusetts, and 

received his BFA from the Parsons School 

of Design in 1982. He began his collaboration 

with Karole Armitage designing costumes 

for the Athens production of Aristophanes’s 

The Birds in 2000. He has created the costumes 

for Schrodinger’s Cat, Drastic Remix, Rave, 

Melodien, SZ110 . . . la sonate and Sonata 

di Caccia (all for Ballet de Lorraine, Nancy, 

France); Living Toys (Rambert Dance Company, 

London); and Nadaswaram, Time is the 

echo of an axe within a wood, Ligeti Essays, 

Connoisseurs of Chaos, and Summer of Love 

(Armitage Gone! Dance, New York). For 

operas directed by Armitage, he has designed 

costumes for Bartok’s Bluebeard’s Castle 

(Opera de Lorraine, Nancy, France), Gluck’s 

Orfeo ed Euridice (Teatro di San Carlo, Naples, 

Italy), Rameau’s Pygmalion (Theatre du 

Chalet, Paris), and Ariadne Unhinged (Gotham 

Chamber Opera, New York). In 2002, he

eturned to New York to continue his work in 

fashion design. He is Senior Vice President of 

Design and Creative Director of Donna Karan. 

He is former Creative Director of Cerruti Arte, 

Paris (1997–2002), and Senior Design Director 

of Donna Karan (1993–97). 

Clifton Taylor 

has designed lighting for Karole Armitage in 

productions in Italy, France, the United Kingdom, 

Monaco, and New York over the past decade. 

His Broadway credits include Jay Johnson: 

The Two and Only (Ovation & LA Drama Critics 

Circle Nominations); Frozen (Lortel Nomination) 

and Hot Feet (Henry Hewes Nomination). 

Off-Broadway credits include Freud’s Last 

Session, Frozen, Scattergood, Endgame, The 

Streets of New York, and Last Easter. Other 

credits include Houston’s Alley Theater, 

Tanglewood Music Center, Opera de Lorraine et 

Nancy (Théâtre du Châtelet, Paris), New York 

City Opera/National Company, the American 

Conservatory Theater (San Francisco), the 

Dallas Theater Center, the Irish Repertory 

Theater (New York), and New York’s MCC 

Theater. He is a frequent designer at the Joyce 

Theater, having designed lighting for Elisa 

Monte, Philadanco, Jacqulyn Buglisi, and Larry 

Keigwin, among many others. 

Lois V Vierk 

studied music composition at California Institute 

of the Arts, and studied and performed gagaku 

(Japanese court music) for twelve years in 

California and Tokyo. She has spent most of 

her career in New York City. Recently, her work 

was performed in a Portrait Concert at German 

Radio. Vierk has been commissioned by many 

performers and presenters, including Lincoln 

Center Festival, Kronos Quartet, Bang On A 

Can, Ensemble Modern, and Music From Japan. 

Her co-creations with tap dance choreographer 

Anita Feldman have been performed at both 

music and dance venues worldwide. 

Dancers 

Sara Beery 

was born in Seattle, Washington, and began 

her dance training at Spectrum Dance Theatre 

and later at the Cornish College of the Arts 

Preparatory Dance Program. She graduated 

early from high school and received a full 

scholarship to the Atlanta Ballet Centre for 

Dance Education, where she danced with the 

school the first year and was then offered a 

fellowship with the Atlanta Ballet under the 

direction of John McFall. During her two years 

with the company she performed works by 

Lauri Stallings, Victor Quihada, James Kudelke, 

George Balanchine, Mark Godden, and Michael 

Pink, among others. She continues summer 

studies at the Alonzo King LINES Ballet and the 

Jacobs Pillow Summer Dance Program, where 

she performed a world premiere by Karole 

Armitage. This is Beery’s second season with 

Armitage Gone! Dance. 

Megumi Eda 

was born in Nagano, Japan, and made her 

professional debut with the Matsuyama Ballet 

Company in Tokyo, where she appeared 

in many of the ballet classics in repertoire. In 

1992, she was invited to join the Hamburg 

Ballet School, and soon after she joined the 

company, where she worked with Mats Ek 

and choreographer/director John Neumeier. 

In 1997, Eda joined the Dutch National Ballet 

where she worked with Twyla Tharp, Hans 

van Manen, Rudi Van Dantzig, William Forsythe,

and Redha. In 2001 she moved to London to 

dance with the Rambert Dance Company. There 

she worked with Christopher Bruce, Jiri Kylian, 

and Lindsey Kemp, and choreographed her 

first two pieces, for the Rambert Company. In 

2002, Eda was awarded “Best New Artist” 

by Japanese national newspaper, Shinano 

Mainichi Shimbun. In 2004 she won a Bessie 

for her performance in Armitage’s Time is the 

echo of an axe within the wood. She recently 

worked with Yasuko Yokoshi and film director 

Abe Abraham. This is Eda’s ninth season with 


Sean Hilton 

is a former member of River North Chicago 

Dance Company, where he performed works 

by Lauri Stallings, Kevin Iaega Jeff, Harrison 

MacEldowney, and Lynne Taylor-Corbett, 

among others. Previously he danced with the 

Bay Area Houston Ballet under the direction 

of George De La Pena, and the Columbia 

Classical Ballet under the direction of Radenko 

Pavlovich. He also teaches dance and choreographs 

extensively throughout the United States, 

with faculty posts at the University of South 

Carolina, the Northwest Florida Ballet, Ballet 

Tennessee, Thodos Dance Chicago, River North 

Chicago Dance Company, and the Lou Conte 

Dance School. He is a guest artist with Lauri 

Stallings gloATL. This is Hilton’s second season 

with Armitage Gone! Dance. 

Abbey Roesner 

was born in Baltimore, Maryland. She began 

her dance training at the Baltimore School for 

the Arts in the T.W.I.G.S. program (To Work 

In Gaining Skills), eventually enrolling full time 

at BSA for grades 9–12, graduating second 

in her class. She received her BFA in 2006 

from the Juilliard School. Her freelance work 

includes dancing with companies and 

choreographers such as the Metropolitan 

Opera Ballet and the Chamber Dance Project, 

Wally Cardona, and Davis Robertson. In 

2007 she joined Les Grands Ballets Canadiens 

de Montreal and performed works by Ohad 

Naharin, Stijn Celis, George Balanchine, and 

Fernand Nault on the company’s tour throughout 

Canada and Europe. Roesner assists with 

teaching and recruitment for Elliot Feld’s Ballet 

Tech School. This is Roesner’s fourth season 


Bennyroyce Royon 

was born in the Philippines and began his 

professional dance training at sixteen, under the 

tutelage of Wade Walthall, at the Evergreen 

City Ballet Academy in Auburn, Washington. 

In 2006 he received his BFA from the Juilliard 

School, where he danced in notable works 

by José Limon, Paul Taylor, Mark Morris, and 

in world premieres by Jessica Lang, Jacqulyn 

Buglisi, Ron Brown, Eliot Feld, Alan Hineline, 

and Jill Johnson. His freelance work includes 

dancing with Carolyn Dorfman Dance Company, 

the Metropolitan Opera Ballet, Sidra Bell Dance 

NY, and Collective Body Dance Lab. Royon is 

a founding member of Rasta Thomas’s all-male 

dance company, Bad Boys of Dance. He has 

toured Canada and Europe with Cas Public, a 

Montréal-based contemporary dance company. 

He has taught dance in Seattle, New York 

City, and Montréal, as well as at Jacob’s Pillow, 

and has received choreographic commissions 

from the Evergreen City Ballet, Bad Boys of 

Dance, the Juilliard School, and most recently 

Atlanta Ballet. Royon produces dance projects 

under his collaborative group Bennyroyce 

Dance Productions, which he founded in 2006.

Photo: Julieta Cervantes

This is Royon’s fourth season with Armitage 

Gone! Dance. 

Marlon Taylor-Wiles 

was born in Houston, Texas, where he trained 

with the Margo Marshall School of Ballet under 

the direction of Margo Marshall and Mary 

Elizabeth Arrington. He graduated from 

Houston’s High School for the Performing and 

Visual Arts and in 2007 received his BFA from 

the Boston Conservatory. While attending the 

Boston Conservatory on full scholarship, he performed 

works by such notable choreographers 

as José Limon, Paul Taylor, and Luis Fuente. 

For the last five years Taylor-Wiles has dedicated 

himself to Tony Williams’s urban Nutcracker, 

which fuses Duke Ellington’s Nutcracker suite 

with Tchaikovsky’s classic score and is set 

in an inner city. In 2009 he performed for the 

Africa and International Friends Inaugural Ball 

in National Harbor, Maryland, honoring the 

inauguration of President Barack Obama. His 

freelance work includes dancing for a production 

with Beyoncé, and modeling for a ten-page 

feature with Chanel Iman for Elle Italia and for a 

photo shoot with Dree Hemingway for the magazine 

I-D. He was also nominated “25 to watch in 

2012” by Dance Magazine. This is Taylor-Wiles’s 

third season with Armitage Gone! Dance. 

Emily Wagner 

studied under scholarships at the Flint Youth 

Ballet, Virginia School of the Arts, and the 

American Ballet Theatre School, and under 

Sabrina Pillars, a mentor from the New York 

City Ballet. She has performed nationally and 

internationally with companies such as Ballet 

Austin, Eglevsky Ballet, Ballet Noir, Terra 

Firma Dance Theater, International Ballet 

Theater, and BalletX in Philadelphia. She 

appeared in Peter Breuer’s Bolero in Salzburg, 

Austria, with the Salzburg Ballet (2005), and 

as a soloist with the Movement Network of 

Amsterdam, the Netherlands (2005–07.) During 

this time she received an international Pilates 

certification with Body Arts and Sciences 

International. Her freelance work includes dancing 

as a tango artist with the New Generation 

Dance Company and guest artist with the 

Pennsylvania Ballet, and modeling for Sansha 

and KD dance. This is Wagner’s third season 


Mei-Hua Wang 

is originally from Taiwan. She trained at the 

National Taiwan Academy of Arts and received 

her MFA from the National Institute of Arts. 

She performed as a principal dancer with 

Capital Ballet Taipei and Taipei Ballet Company, 

and has been a guest artist with Korea Universal 

Ballet Company, Peking Central Opera 

Ballet, and Ballet Moderno y Folklorico de 

Guatemala. Since moving to New York in 1999, 

Wang has performed and worked with Igal 

Perry/Peridance Ensemble, Rebecca Kelly 

Ballet, Stephen Petronio, Earl Mosely, Sue 

Bernhard Danceworks, Silver-Brown Dance, 

and Williamsworks, among others. Her first choreographic 

commission premiered in May 2006 

for the Capital Ballet Taipei. This is Wang’s sixth 

season with Armitage Gone! Dance. 

Jacob Michael Warren 

recently earned his BFA in dance from 

Marymount Manhattan College, where he performed 

works by Christopher d’Amboise, 

Edgar Zendejas, and David Parsons. Since 

graduation, he has worked with TAKEdance, 

under the direction of Takehiro Ueyama and 

Jill Echo. He has also danced with the

Connecticut Ballet, Benjamin Briones Ballet, 

and the Steps on Broadway Repertory 

Ensemble. He is a founding member of Missing 

Eye Physical Theatre, a multimedia production 

company. Additionally Warren is a 

dedicated harmonica and saxophone player 

and member of a blues band based in 

New York. This is Warren’s first season with 


Masayo Yamaguchi 

was born in Nagano, Japan. She started her 

ballet training with Tamae Tsukada, and has 

a BFA in dance education from the University 

of Central Oklahoma. She has performed in 

Austria, Hungary, Slovakia, and Japan, notably 

the “pas de trios” in Swan Lake with the 

Leningrad Ballet’s tour to Nagano. At UCA 

she was a member of Kaleidoscope Dancers 

Company and received the Kaleidoscope Dance 

Award in 2003. She moved to New York and 

joined Faune Dance Troupe the same year. 

Before joining the company she was a guest 

dancer with Armitage Gone! Dance for engagements 

at the Duke on 42nd Street Theater 

(2005), the Joyce Theater (2007), and Lincoln 

Center Out of Doors (2008.) This is Yamaguchi’s 

fourth season with Armitage Gone! Dance. 

Armitage Foundation 

Board of Directors 

David Salle, Chairman 

Karole Armitage 

Lorinda Ash 

Dominique Lévy 

Richard Massey 

Donald Rosenfeld 


Giovanni Spinelli 

Robert L. Turner 


Staff 

Karole Armitage, 

Artistic Director 

Alexandra 

Greenwald, 

Company Manager 

Christina Johnson, 

Rehearsal Director 

Sallie Sanders, 

Development Manager 

Lucy Mallett, 

Fiscal Manager 


is a 501(c)(3) 

nonprofit organization. 

ARMITAGE GONE! DANCE 

437 Madison Avenue, 37th 

Floor, NYC, 10022 

212.431.4314 

info@armitagegonedance. 

org 

www.armitagegonedance.org

Courtesy 

Guidelines and 

Information 

As one of the nation’s largest multidisciplinary museums devoted to 

the art of our time, the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago offers 

exhibitions of the most thought-provoking art of today. The museum’s 

performing arts program, MCA Stage, is the most active presenter of 

theater, dance, and music in Chicago, featuring leading performers 

from around the globe in our 300-seat theater. 

MCA Stage is committed to presenting groundbreaking performances 

that focus on collaboration; working closely with artists; converging 

with the larger programming of the museum; and offering a contemporary 

view of the traditional roots of performance. 

Parking 

Validate your ticket at coat 

check for $11 parking in the MCA 

garage (220 E. Chicago Avenue) 

and Bernardin garage (747 N. 

Wabash). The $11 parking is 

limited to six hours on date 

of performance. 

Lost and found 

To inquire about a lost item, 

call the museum at 312.280.2660. 

Unclaimed articles are held for 

30 days. 

Mary Ittelson, 

Chair of the Board of 

Trustees 

Madeleine Grynsztein, 

Pritzker Director 

Janet Alberti, 

Deputy Director 

Michael Darling, 

James W. Alsdorf Chief 

Curator 

Performance Committee 

Lois Eisen, Chair 

Katherine A. Abelson 

Ellen Stone Belic 

Pamela Crutchfield 

Ginger Farley 

Gale Fischer 

Jay Franke 

John C. Kern 

Lisa Yun Lee 

Elizabeth A. Liebman 

Lewis Manilow 

Alfred L. McDougal 

Paula Molner 

Sharon Oberlander 

Maya Polsky 

D. Elizabeth Price 

Carol Prins 

Cheryl Seder 

Patty Sternberg 

Richard Tomlinson 

Performance Programs 

Peter Taub, Director 

Yolanda Cesta Cursach, 

Associate Director 

Surinder Martignetti, Manager 

Antonia Callas, Assistant 

Kevin Brown, 

House Management Associate 

Alicia M Graff, 


Quinlan Kirchner, 


Eboni Senai Hawkins, Intern 

Theater Management 

Dennis O’Shea, 

Manager of Technical 

Production 

Richard Norwood, 

Theater Production Manager 

Box Office 

Matti Allison, Manager 

Phongtorn Phongluantum, 

Assistant Manager 

Molly Laemle, Coordinator 

Jena Hirschy, Associate 

Lucy Pearson, Associate 

Gabriel Garcia, Associate 

Program notes compiled by 

Yolanda Cesta Cursach 

Seating 

Switch off all noise-making 

devices while you are in 

the theater. 

Late arrivals are seated at the 

management’s discretion. Food 

and open beverage containers are 

not allowed in the seating area. 

Reproduction 

Unauthorized recording and 

reproduction of a performance 

is prohibited. 

Museum of Contemporary Art 

Chicago 

220 E. Chicago Avenue 

Chicago, Illinois 60611 

mcachicago.org 

General information 312.280.2660 

Box office 312.397.4010 

Volunteer for performances 

312.397.4072 

housemanagers@mcachicago.org 

Contact the Performance department 

housemanagers@mcachicago.org 

Museum hours 

Tuesday: 10 am–8 pm 

Wednesday–Sunday: 10am–5pm 

Closed Mondays, Thanksgiving, 

Christmas, and New Year’s Day

Program Notes - Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago

You also want an ePaper? Increase the reach of your titles

Delete template?

Save as template?