A a | a B : B E N D

In A a | a B : B E N D, two visionaries of their fields — Aszure Barton and Ambrose Akinmusire — create an intimate yet wildly provocative world where dancers and musicians coexist on stage to embrace human friction, tension, and explosive beauty. Their cross-genre partnership is a masterclass in collaboration unfolding with intention and authenticity.

In B E N D, dance and music join in an in-depth dialogue. The coming together of music and dance is reconstructed in a way that elevates and ignites both art forms. In this multidisciplinary, multidimensional world, the dancers, musician (Akinmusire himself), and members of the audience share the stage for the evening, making this exchange between forms visible and tangible. Having made its premiere in August 2023 at Kampnagel’s International Summer Festival, Falk Schraiber of Tanz Magazine described B E N D as a "refusal of categorization” with “Barton’s choreography building ordered systems [only to] allow this order to dissolve.”

As a choreographer, jazz offers the musical equivalent of Barton’s style of dance-making, the exploration of a choreographic language that simultaneously respects and dismantles classical and contemporary forms. Her dances are an amalgam of authentic movement, modern dance, postmodern aesthetics and less-centralized dance styles such as voguing and breaking, in which she reconstructs traditional patterns and infuses a sense of humanity to the work.

The evening-length piece draws from the principle of unlearning – the attempt to unlearn views and dominant patterns in order to turn to a more intimate practice of trust, awareness, and expansion. Akinmusire and Barton align in their interest as visual composers and already exist outside the pigeonholes of public perception: Aszure Barton with her breadth of fertile movement language driven by form, rhythm and humanity, and Ambrose Akinmusire who masterfully weaves inspiration from other genres, arts, and life into compositions that are as poetic and graceful as they are fierce and unflinching. The convergence of these two distinguished artists through B E N D creates a cosmic refuge for the senses, oscillating between up-close and personal to vastly distanced and massive, full of puzzling beauty and raw, physical emotion.

“It’s magical. You can’t take your eyes off it. And you can’t get enough of this declaration of love for being together, which continually invents new patterns to explain itself… [In B E N D] the soul finds enough air to listen carefully.” - tanznetz.