"It takes a committed bunhead to spend eight hours hiking over a mountain with a 13,000-foot peak just to get to ballet class. It also requires one devoted to nature. Karole Armitage is both. As a child, she spent summers at Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory in Gothic, Colo., a former ghost town from the silver mining period where her father, a biologist, did research. “Starting at about age 13, I would hike straight over the mountain to go to Aspen, where Ballet West had a summer residency,” Ms. Armitage said recently at her TriBeCa apartment. “I would stay there for three weeks and hike back. That’s the crazy way I grew up.” Her father would accompany her during those remote and rigorous treks. Now 61 and a well-established choreographer, Ms. Armitage retains that bond with the natural world in her lush work, which melds classical ballet with sinuous silhouettes: limbs twist and lengthen like curling vines. Ms. Armitage has moved beyond her love of nature to directly express her concern over its future. In 2013, she created “Fables on Global Warming,” a performance-art ballet inspired by animal stories and, last year, presented an ecology-minded piece for families, “Four Seasons — A Spinning Planet.” Now with the premiere of “On the Nature of Things,” performed by Armitage Gone! Dance, March 25-27 at the American Museum of Natural History, Ms. Armitage’s activist side has grown even more brazen as she tackles climate change. The dance takes place on three stages in the Milstein Hall of Ocean Life — with its 94-foot blue whale suspended from the ceiling — and features live narration and original text by Dr. Paul R. Ehrlich, a MacArthur fellow and professor of biology and population studies at Stanford who has known Ms. Armitage since she was 2. “Nature is my source of solace and a great inspiration choreographically,” Ms. Armitage said. “So the fact of global warming gives me dismay. I just thought, maybe I can do something about the topic and what better place than the Museum of Natural History?”" - Jessie

"Her research led to the discovery of an essay by Dr. Ehrlich that focuses on the culture surrounding science. His text, written for “On the Nature of Things,” stresses that the public doesn’t fully understand what’s at stake. Ms. Armitage views her dance and Dr. Ehrlich’s text as parallel journeys. “What it’s meant to do is to make the subject matter completely personal and emotional,” she said. “You go from a sense of peace and balance to peril and turbulence and population pressures and stress; then you see a confrontation and reckoning with that, which leads to a change of consciousness to rediscover equilibrium. To me, it’s a matter of changing how we think.” For Dr. Ehrlich, collaborating with Ms. Armitage and the museum is a way to reach the public on a personal level. “One of the things that we’ve proven beyond a shadow of a doubt is that telling people what the science is doesn’t change their behavior,” Dr. Ehrlich said. “What we need is to change attitudes.”" - Jessie

"While there have been performances at the museum — in December, Savion Glover appeared as part of a Kwanzaa celebration — it is hardly a formidable player in the city’s expanding world of dance presenters. “On the Nature of Things,” which includes performances by children from Manhattan Youth Ballet, is the museum’s most ambitious undertaking of this sort. “It’s such a different world for them,” Ms. Armitage said of the administration. “They didn’t really understand that you needed to rehearse. They thought we could walk in, like a corporate event, and just do it.” In the end, she secured four hours of dress rehearsal time. “It’s terrifying,” Ms. Armitage added. Still, she was convinced that her dance needed to happen at the museum. Ruth Cohen, the director of its center for lifelong learning, said the performance was a chance to emphasize a scientific idea in a fresh way. “It’s a still-life hall, right?” she said, referring to the room’s models and dioramas. “This is really bringing movement to it.” The work, seen at a recent rehearsal, begins with a dreamy, meditative duet for Megumi Eda and Cristian Laverde Koenig, but as more dancers enter — gradually expanding to 35 — the choreography takes a frenetic turn as the performers, increasingly ruthless and desperate, fight for space. A quieter scene, set to Arvo Pärt’s “Für Alina,” follows, evoking blindness; it’s Ms. Armitage’s way of saying that it’s time to pay attention. Gradually, the dancers move from suffering to enlightenment; in the final section, the children arrive. “It’s a renewal of faith that we can make change,” Ms. Armitage said, “and children embody that.” When Ms. Armitage was a child, she participated in field work with various scientists, but during her teenage years ballet took precedence. Her career led her to New York and later to Switzerland, where she joined the Ballet du Grand Théâtre de Genève, under George Balanchine and Patricia Neary’s direction, in 1973. Three years later, she returned to New York and joined the Merce Cunningham Dance Company before striking out on her own. But the lectures she heard from the age of 5 stuck; she said she was formed by the scientists’ sense of discipline and objectivity. In “On the Nature of Things,” Ms. Armitage is conducting an experiment: She hopes to shift the audience’s consciousness through dance. “The body speaks because it’s so intuitive and not based on language,” she said. “People get the visceral experience, and I think it’s the best way to convey an emotional journey. This is a love affair with nature: It goes through some very tormented and dark and difficult times, but like any love affair, in order for it to continue, you have to grow.”" - Jessie