By Poppy Wilkinson / Photographs by Edwin Tse
“We cannot seek or attain health, wealth, learning, justice or kindness in general. Action is always specific, concrete, individualized, unique.” _Benjamin Jowett
Gregorian chants blast from Les Ballet Jazz de Montréal (BJM_Danse) studio. Two male dancers are rehearsing for the show Jack in a Box as a dozen or so sweatpants-clad dancers sit around the perimeter of the room, watching and stretching. The choreographer-in-residence, Aszure Barton, stops the music and walks over to the two men, getting right up close and speaking in a voice so quiet that I strain to hear her from just a few feet away. “I’d like to see you do this instead,” Barton says, grabbing one of the guys by the cheeks with her forefinger and thumb, like you would to a chubby-cheeked boy. The dancers on the sidelines laugh.
Barton has earned the respect of her dancers with this intimate, personal approach. She does a lot of what she calls tasking – asking dancers to do exercises that are more psychological and emotional than physical. This collaborative soul searching is the starting point for many of the best sequences in her shows. “It’s not just me coming in and saying, ‘Do these steps.’ The dancers create the work with me,” she explains
Dance hasn’t been so popular since Michael Jackson moonwalked his way to superstardom, and the Edmonton-born, New York-based Barton has become a kind of It-girl. At 32, she has choreographed a Tony-nominated Broadway show (starring Cyndi Lauper), founded her own dance company, taught at the Julliard School and become the artist-in-residence at the Baryshnikov Arts Center.
Barton is credited with creating some of the most innovative work in contemporary dance. Mischa – as she called fondly calls the iconic dancer Mikhail Baryshnikov – describes her work as “fresh, arresting and fascinating.” Not that she wants all the credit. “I am not just doing it on my own. I’ve been very lucky and successful…” Barton laughs and makes bunny ear gestures to suggest quotation marks. “…whatever that means. But it is with an incredible amount of devotion from the team.”
The organizations who commission shows, however, can’t always offer the kind of lead times that these relationships require, so she will often fi ght for, say, the seven weeks it takes her to create a one-hour piece. With a kind of old school approach to developing talent, Barton likes to get to know her team. Dance troupes are usually referred to as The Company, but Barton calls hers The Family. “I am really interested in the people that I am working with. I am not interested in saying, ‘I am Aszure and this is what I want you to do.’ I want to create an environment where people feel they can bring stuff to it. I don’t
want them to feel like I am on a power trip.”
The personal/business divide can get tricky when you’re so close to your team. “As an artistic director or leader of a group, you have to be able to separate yourself,” Barton says. “There are certain things that just have to be said, or have to be directed, or otherwise there is no focus.” So while she is no whip-cracking dictator, she admits, “I am learning to be a businesswoman, in terms of, you are not always going to make everyone happy. And that you have to detach, though I can never detach completely. I still take everything to heart, and I think that makes a good company, any kind of company.”
Just back from Australia, where she worked on a commission for the Sydney Dance Company, Barton made a quick pit stop in New York before landing in Montreal, with emergency meetings scattered along the way. A workday might go until 10:30 or 11 p.m., then the troupe goes for beers and often heads back to the studio, not because they have to, just because they want to. Still, there can be too much of a good thing. Barton refers to 2006 as a year of “absolute fantasy-hell.” She was choreographing and workshopping a show in Montreal, making a new one for her company, creating a piece for Baryshnikov and choreographing The Threepenny Opera. Then she was asked to do another show and had to say no. “I couldn’t do it and it killed me. Because you want to take everything. You’re thinking: How long is this going to last? How long am I going to have these opportunities? Now I realize that life is what it is and that I have to be patient.
This January, BJM_Danse is touring the shows Les Chambres des Jacques and Jack in a Box in Alberta (they were created at the Banff Centre for the Arts). Barton hopes the tour will break through the stigmas some people have of modern dance and make them see that it’s “not always some weird naked person running around stage. Though it can be, and that can be very, very beautiful.”
Aszure is gratified when audiences not used to contemporary dance are surprised when they actually have a good time. Creating an experience is part of what she considers to be her job. “I’m not trying to do some egomaniacal work, masturbation on stage. At the same time, I’m not trying to create accessible work, but work that people can relate to. Because it’s real people.” And so is she. U
