Northrop and the Walker Art Center Present
Aszure Barton & Ambrose Akinmusire:
A a | a B : B E N D
Past event
Sep 18, 2025
Sep 19, 2025
Choreographer Aszure Barton and award-winning composer Ambrose Akinmusire, two visionaries in their fields, created multidisciplinary, multidimensional A a | a B : B E N D, a Northrop Centennial Commission. For this evening-length work, the dancers, Akinmusire, and members of the audience share space for the performance—with a choice of seating onstage (Price 1) or on the orchestra level (Prices 2 & 3) of the theater. Dance and music engage in an in-depth dialogue in B E N D, crafting an intimate yet wildly provocative world where dancers and musicians coexist on stage to embrace human friction, tension, and explosive beauty.
Akinmusire is a composer and trumpeter who circles both the center and periphery of jazz. For Barton as a choreographer, jazz offers the musical equivalent of her dance-making process, amplifying the exploration of a choreographic language that simultaneously respects and dismantles classical and contemporary forms. Her dances are an amalgam of authentic movement, modern and postmodern aesthetics, and less-centralized dance styles such as voguing and breaking. The convergence of these two distinguished artists 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.
Learn more about this immersive performance on the Northrop Blog in "A a | a B : B E N D Up Close and Personal" and “Aszure Barton & Ambrose Akinmusire Bend the Rules.”
Post-Show Q&A: Thu, Sep 18, stay after for a Q&A with Aszure Barton and Ambrose Akinmusire.
Performance Preview: Fri, Sep 19, at 6:30 pm in the Best Buy Theater, attend the free Performance Preview With Aszure Barton.
Top image: Scene from A a | a B : B E N D. Photo © Fabian Hammerl.
Articles & More
“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.
“[Aszure Barton] offers an entire world, full of surprise and humor, emotion and pain, expressed through a dance vocabulary that takes ballet technique and dismantles it to near-invisibility.”—The New York Times
“[Ambrose Akinmusire is] a trumpeter of deep expressive resources and a composer of kaleidoscopic vision.”—NPR Music
Related Event(s)
Learn More - Explore These Themes
The content below derives from the Northrop Across Campus Program that supports Northrop's mission towards intersections between performing arts and education for the benefit of all participants now and for generations to come.
Find ways to make thematic connections to these suggested topics:
- Improvisation
- Music: Composition, Jazz, Trumpet
- African American & African Studies
- Dance: Ballet & Contemporary/Modern
- Multidisciplinary & Multimedia Collaboration
- Audience & Artist Interaction
Dive deeper with these resources that provide additional information about the performers, the history of the artform, and the artistic process.
Links:
About Aszure Barton website
About Ambrose Akinmusire website
Video: "Inside the Studio: A Duo, a World Premiere by Aszure Barton | Hubbard Street Dance Chicago"
"Review: Can Hubbard Street Dance Chicago Find a New Voice?"—The New York Times
"Ambrose Akinmusire Learned to Let Go (With Help From Joni Mitchell)"—The New York Times
2025 Grammy Nominees Announced—Downbeat
The Rebel: Choreographer Aszure Barton Finds the Humanity in the Human Body—San Francisco Classical Voice
Video: "Northrop and the Walker Art Center Present Aszure Barton & Ambrose Akinmusire: A a | a B : B E N D"
Video: "BUSK by Aszure Barton" | Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater
Start a conversation about the performance or encourage reflection, using these questions as inspiration.
Choreographer Aszure Barton and composer Ambrose Akinmusire unite to create A a | a B : B E N D, a multidisciplinary, multidimensional evening-length work. Audience members are seated on and around the stage, deepening the exchange between music and dance and amplifying both artists’ embrace of improvisation.
- How does the physical layout of a performance space affect the felt experience of dancers, musicians, and the audience, and how might a close, engaged audience affect this performance?
After A a | a B : B E N D premiered at Kampnagel International Summer Festival in Hamburg, Germany in Aug 2023, German-based dance magazine tanznetz wrote, “Having produced numerous projects together to date, [Barton and Akinmusire’s] creations have been described as a refusal of categorization that also draws their appeal from the fact that two artists who are completely secure in their field playfully unsettle each other.”
- What are some advantages or disadvantages that artists could face when collaborating across disciplines?
- How do categorization and genre affect our perception of, and relationship to, art?
- What, if anything, is gained by pushing the boundaries of a specific genre?
Early in her career, Barton founded Aszure Barton & Artists to create an autonomous, interdisciplinary, and collaborative platform for process-centered exploration. Her choreographic process is driven by curiosity, and while she prepares thoroughly before each creation begins, she practices letting go and listening in the room which shapes the work beyond anything originally planned. “If we know where we're going before we get there, we make something we've made before,” she says. Barton's work, BUSK, was last seen at Northrop in Jan 2024, as part of Hubbard Street Dance Chicago's mixed repertory performance, where she currently serves as a resident artist.
- What might change or stay the same within a choreographer’s creative process as they transition from creating works for their own dance company to serving as a resident artist for a legacy dance institution?
- What role do you imagine exploration plays within the rehearsal process and development of new works?
- If you were to choreograph a dance piece, would you be more inclined to develop the work in real time with the dancers or to set an already planned piece on a company? Why?
Acknowledgments
The 2025 production of A a | a B : B E N D is produced by Pomegranate Arts and TO Live. A a | a B : B E N D is developed with the support of the National Arts Centre’s National Creation Fund which invests in compelling new creations in the performing arts and supports Canadian artists in achieving their boldest ambitions. The production was mounted with the generous support of Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity through a theatre production residency in Aug and Sep 2025.
A a | a B : B E N D was originally commissioned and produced by Internationales Sommerfestival Kampnagel and Aszure Barton & Artists; co-commissioned by UCLA’s Center for the Art of Performance, The Los Angeles County Department of Arts and Culture, the Ford Theatre Foundation, and Northrop at the University of Minnesota.
Support: The Dianne and Daniel Vapnek Family Fund, The Charles and Joan Gross Family Foundation, Mid Atlantic Arts through USArtist International, a program in partnership with the National Endowment for the Arts, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and the Trust for Mutual Understanding. Creative residency and development support by Orsolina Art Foundation, Babs Case + Dancers’ Workshop, and Baryshnikov Arts Center. World Premiere: Kampnagel International Summer Festival, Hamburg, Aug 2023.
This activity is made possible by the voters of Minnesota through a Minnesota State Arts Board Operating Support grant, thanks to a legislative appropriation from the Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund.
