Azure barton biography for kids

A native of Alberta, Canada, Barton began tap dancing at age three, launching an unusually active childhood filled with modern dance, ballet, musical theater, synchronized swimming, and competitive high jumping. With her friends, she would invent dance pieces, films, and skits, noting that she began choreographing her friends "when I was a teeny little person.

Although she nurtured dreams of becoming an orthodontist "I was a fanatic about teeth and mouths," she said , it was the voice she found through choreography that proved irresistible. With movement, expression [is] much more comfortable. Barton eventually gravitated to modern dance for its "freedom of expression," though her varied background in dance is something she says cannot be erased from her bones or body.

You go, 'Okay, let's do this together. I'll lead it. This momentum was brought to the attention of former Mark Morris dancer Ruth Davidson Hahn, and Barton was invited to perform with Hahn's company in Nebraska in While at a reception there, she met dance legend Mikhail Baryshnikov, who was performing a piece Hahn had created for him the year prior.

I'd like to see your work. Dismissing the comment as idle party chitchat, she was surprised to find a message from him when she returned to New York. What followed was the type of mentorship that every artist dreams of but only a lucky handful manage to secure. Although Barton said that developing trust with new dancers can be challenging, the unique dynamics of each group push Barton's work in new creative directions.

She rarely arrives in the studio with a set plan, instead preferring to use the dancers' energy as a guide. The people I work with are so incredibly intelligent and creative themselves that I'm really interested in the collaboration, and facilitating a space where they can bring themselves to the work. Choreographing for other companies also influences Barton's work with her own New York-based company, which operates on a project basis rather than a full-time, daily schedule.

We all get to venture out, collect experience, and come back. The moments [together] are really special. This spring, the company will tour the U. I do not have all of the answers, but I certainly can teach something and facilitate a space that can support and teach what I know. In its review of a performance, The Buffalo News says that Barton and her company "let flow wave after wave of idiosyncratic movement that vacillated from elegantly graceful to stylized clowning and the outright bizarre.

This article about a Canadian associated with the art of dance is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. Contents move to sidebar hide. Article Talk. Read Edit View history. Tools Tools. Download as PDF Printable version. In other projects. Wikidata item. Canadian-born choreographer. Career [ edit ]. References [ edit ]. Toronto Star.

Retrieved October 18, Aszure and Artists. Archived from the original on September 4, Retrieved July 17, Dance Magazine.