Karole Armitage, popularly known as the "punk ballerina", was born in 1952 in Madison, Wisconsin and grew up in Gothic, Colorado and Lawrence, Kansas. She began studying ballet at the age of four and went on to train in Lawrence, Crested Butte, Aspen, Salt Lake City, New York City, North Carolina, and London. Her first professional ballet position was as a member of the Ballet du Grand Théâtre de Genève in Switzerland from 1973-1975 under the direction of George Balanchine. She then joined Merce Cunningham's company from 1975-1981.

Armitage is a prolific and talented choreographer, leading several of her own companies to great international success. Armitage started her first company, Armitage Gone! in 1979, and then founded the Armitage Ballet in 1985, while taking choreography commissions from European ballet and opera companies. In 2005 she launched Armitage Gone! Dance, a New York-based ballet company that continues to tour worldwide today. In her career as a choreographer, Armitage has collaborated with several visual artists in her productions, such as Jeff Koons and David Salle.

Karole Armitage has received a number of honors and awards throughout her career, including a Guggenheim Fellowship for Choreography in 1986, Chevalier dans l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in France in 1992, Officier dans l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in France in 2002, Grand Prix Roscigno Danza in Italy in 2005, a Radcliffe Fellowship at Harvard University and a Simons Fellowship at the University of Kansas in 2016, and a fellowship at MIT as a Media Lab Directors Fellow in 2017.

Karole's mother, Katie Armitage, is a local historian in Lawrence, Kansas.