|
|
Feb. 22, 2008
The cutting edge of dance
Artist offers interactive performance to which all can relate.
KATHARINE HAMER
Amber Funk Barton has performed with some of Vancouver's top contemporary companies and was the inaugural recipient of the Iris Garland Emerging Choreographer Award, but when she was told by her instructors at the Goh Ballet Academy that she would never make it as a ballerina, the 27-year-old Richmond native almost abandoned her dance career completely.
"It was a typical ballet thing," Funk Barton said in a recent interview with the Independent, "where you're told, 'You're not going to be a ballet dancer' and, at that point, when you're really young, you think, 'Oh, so I guess, since I'm not a soloist in New York at ABT [American Ballet Theatre], I guess I didn't make it, kind of thing.' But it's just one perception of what [there] is."
Luckily for dance audiences, Funk Barton – whose duet Bittersweet debuts next week at the Chutzpah! festival – did not give up. She went on to train at the Arts Umbrella, where she rediscovered what it was she loved so much about dancing.
"There are those moments on stage where you're just free," she mused. "It's just like a drug. For me, there's so much satisfaction in expressing myself through my work. The problem-solving, the creativity involved.... Those are those moments I just love about dance, where it's like you're completed suspended, whether you're performing or watching it – you totally get transported. You forget about your bills, you forget about your problems, everything, even if it's just for a couple of seconds."
It's a sensation she hopes to bring to viewers of her own choreography. With live music by Mark Berube of spoken-word group the Fugitives, Bittersweet promises to be a distinctly interactive affair.
"It just feels like it's more of an experience," said Funk Barton of having musicians on stage during a performance. "Maybe someone doesn't understand dancing, but they can go into the music. So if you have more elements, it can allow more people to come in and be accessible."
She described working with Berube and dancing to a live – rather than pre-recorded – soundtrack as "such a privilege. It challenges you as a dancer and as a creator."
Funk Barton also valued the collaborative nature of choreographing with input from both Berube and her fellow performer in Bittersweet, Ballet B.C. soloist James Gnam. "It's nice to feel like I'm not alone in creating this thing," she said. "It's like I have a little team and we're all working together ... then it doesn't become a dance show, it becomes a performance, an experience."
In Bittersweet, Gnam and Funk Barton portray a long-separated pair of lovers, dancing (both literally and figuratively) around their attraction in a "will they, won't they" tango.
Although she met her husband straight out of high school and has been happily married for years, Funk Barton said relationships – the way we interact, particularly romantically – have always been a source of intrigue for her.
"I'm completely fascinated by the romantic relationship between a woman and a man," she said, "whether it does get fulfilled or it doesn't get fulfilled. The not fulfilling of the relationship is almost, to me, more fascinating. There's that chemistry and they get along ... it's like, 'Why can't they be together?' You meet two people whose personalities just mesh completely and it's like, 'They should be together, why aren't they together?' "
It is, observed Funk Barton, a universal theme and besides, "I'm a total romantic, a total weeper – that's why it works for me, too."
Of her own, more stable, home life, she noted that her husband, a construction estimator, has "always been extremely supportive" of her career. This, in part, has allowed her to focus completely on her dancing.
She said it's an exciting time to be involved in the dance scene in Vancouver, with the city on the cusp of new trends in movement.
"There are so many opportunities for young dancers and young emerging choreographers to have their work seen," she said. "I think something interesting that's really starting to happen is the fusion of movement with the younger generation. I think it's a reflection of the generation now that has so much access to information, everything's at our fingertips.
"Dancers now are much more accustomed to mixing it up. They didn't go to professional ballet schools, they went to these schools in the suburbs where they do everything – jazz, modern, tap, hip-hop.... As a result of that, it's produced these types of dancers that have been exposed to everything and, even though they all have their own specialties, they can access those different forms if they have to."
Funk Barton herself is interested in "fusing contemporary dance with pop culture or folk music ... just mixing different worlds." It's all part of her mission to make art a part of our social fabric.
"It feels like it's very risk-taking to express your feelings sometimes," she observed. "Everybody's very closed in, with their iPods and their laptops – everybody's very self-contained. I think this is what art essentially does – it reminds us that we all have feelings and we all have these experiences, and that's what makes us human. That's definitely what I want to give to the audience – what I'd like to share with them."
Bittersweet is part of the Dance All-Stars program at the Norman Rothstein Theatre, with shows Thursday, Feb. 28, and Saturday, March 1, at 9 p.m., and Sunday, March 2, at 2 p.m. For more information, visit www.chutzpahfestival.com.
Katharine Hamer is a Vancouver freelance writer and editor. Her website is www.literaryparamedic.com.
^TOP
|
|
