✦ Who She Is ✦
Aszure Barton trained at Canada's National Ballet School before moving into contemporary dance and choreography, founding her own company, Aszure Barton & Artists, in New York in 2002 as a vehicle for developing new work with a consistent group of collaborators. Rather than building an institution with a fixed home and season, the company has functioned more like a touring workshop, allowing Barton to develop pieces slowly with trusted dancers before those pieces move into companies including Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, Nederlands Dans Theater, and New York City Ballet.
Barton became closely associated with Mikhail Baryshnikov early in her career, creating several solo and ensemble works for him, including Come In (2006), a collaboration that raised her profile considerably and reflected the same qualities that define her broader body of work: attentiveness to the individual performer's physical idiosyncrasies, and a willingness to let choreography emerge from extended studio collaboration rather than arrive pre-set.
Signature Works
Blue Soup (2004)
An early ensemble work marked by percussive, textured group movement and an interest in ritual and repetition that would recur throughout Barton's later choreography.
Come In (2006)
Created for and with Mikhail Baryshnikov, this intimate, gestural solo work helped establish Barton's international reputation outside Canada.
Busk (2009)
Made for Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, this ensemble work draws on street-performance imagery and ritualistic group patterning, becoming one of the company's most frequently revived pieces.
Awáa (2012)
A large ensemble work for Aszure Barton & Artists, danced by a mostly male cast, exploring maternal lineage and the body's inherited memory around a commissioned score. Read the full profile →
Style & Method
Barton's process leans heavily on collaboration and improvisation in the studio: she builds material with her dancers rather than arriving with finished phrases, and her choreography retains that improvisatory texture even once it is set, favoring grounded weight, earthy gesture, and small idiosyncratic details over polished uniformity. Original commissioned scores, often built in close dialogue with the choreography itself, are central to her work, giving each piece a distinct sonic identity rather than relying on pre-existing music.
A Career Without a Fixed Address
Because Aszure Barton & Artists has never operated with a permanent theatre or subscription season, Barton's reputation has been built almost entirely through repeat invitations — companies that commission a piece, then bring her back. That pattern, rather than a single signature venue, is itself part of what defines her career: her choreography has to prove itself anew with each company's dancers and audience rather than resting on an institutional identity built up over decades.
Legacy
Working across ballet companies and contemporary troupes alike without settling permanently into either world, Barton has become a model for a choreographic career built on portable, collaborative process rather than institutional headquarters. Her commissions for companies such as Hubbard Street Dance Chicago and Nederlands Dans Theater reflect a broader pattern of ballet-trained and contemporary companies alike turning to her collaborative process to expand their repertoire.
That model has since become common practice for the field's most in-demand contemporary choreographers, including Crystal Pite, who has built a similarly portable career moving between her own company and commissions for major ballet houses.