Known for my experiments in hybrid dance-theater fusion, I am a choreographer whose work lives at the intersection of dance, theater, and installation art. My choreography consists of small fragments of everyday text and movement that are distilled, distorted, polished, and deconstructed to reveal the layers of ambiguity, pathos, and absurdity underneath the surface. Repetitive and deconstructed gestures, expressions, and found objects are layered on top of each other to build compelling, complete environments which allow deeper truths covered over in the everyday to surface and come into focus. My work can be very funny, acutely psychological or philosophical and sometimes all three at once.
I base my work in the many movement forms I have studied over the years, but particularly in my ongoing investigations of somatic movement practices, and their psycho-somatic ramifications. I also add in pared down elements of theater, text, voice, video, and installation art to create minimalist cross-media Gesamtkunstwerk. Starting from the Judson realm of the everyday, and especially that strange and delicate juncture point where everyday movement meets crafted, intentional movement, I create works that privilege the moment of being present.
Mary Armentrout is a choreographer who creates hybrid dance-theater fusion works that she calls performance installations. Drawing raves and somewhat puzzled acclaim from the critics: "a performance artist of tremendous range" (Dance View Times), "a quirky idiosyncratic choreographer who assembles works that appear illogical on the surface - but somehow her twisted humor, comic timing, and odd use of furniture and bodies coalesce into meaningful dance" (The East Bay Monthly), she is engaged in "inventing a new kind of dance theater right before our eyes" (Dance View Times).
She received her BA from Sarah Lawrence College, concentrating particularly on dance and philosophy. After many years of making and performing work in the Bay Area, on the East Coast, and in France and Germany, she formed the Mary Armentrout Dance Theater in 2000. The company consists of herself, Merlin Coleman, Jennifer Maytorena Taylor, Natalie Greene, April Taylor, Christy Funsch, Rodney Johnson, and Jim Saliba, and is a blend of dancers, actors, a composer and a filmmaker.
Armentrout creates work for both conventional and site-specific venues: the Mary Armentrout Dance Theater has appeared at numerous venues all over the San Francisco Bay Area, including ODC Theater, The LAB, Dance Mission Theater, and CounterPULSE, as well as in performance installations at the Luggage Store Annex, Ft. Funston State Park, Dadafest, and the Tenderloin "Festival In The Street." Her work has also been presented in the Retail Dance Festival, the DUMBO (NY) Dance Festival, the SFFringe Festival, the "Women on the Edge" Series, and the Hunter Mountain (NY) Performing Series, among others. She is currently starting a collaboration with sound/performance artist Pamela Z, and recently co-curated a Movement Research (NY) Studies Project on work from the Bay Area.
Armentrout has received support from the Zellerbach Family Fund and the CA$H Grant program. In 2002-2003 she was an artist-in-residence at The LAB, and was awarded Djerassi residencies in 2004 and 2007 and an 848 Community Space Winter Residency in 2005. She maintains a private bodywork practice, teaches technique at Danspace in Oakland and also co-curates the mixed performance salon "The Milk Bar" at The Biscuit Factory in Oakland. Armentrout enjoys being the president of the board of Dancers' Group, considered the most important contemporary dance service organization in the Bay Area, and is also on the board of the FieldSF.