Bending the Process

The sought-after choreographer Aszure Barton and award-winning composer Ambrose Akinmusire bend their individual arcs toward one another in their collaborative, multi-disciplinary work titled “A a | a B : Bend,” presented as part of Lincoln Center’s Pasculano Collaborative for Contemporary Dance. Following on the heels of the Limón Company’s recent New York performance of “Join,” another creation born of this inspired partnership, “Bend” incontrovertibly reimagines dance and music as co-equal partners in an exploratory conversation co-created and performed by the members of Aszure Barton & Artists and Ambrose Akinmusire.

Performance

“A a | a B : Bend” by Aszure Barton and Ambrose Akinmusire

Place

Rose Theater, Lincoln Center, New York, NY, October 28, 2026

Words

Karen Greenspan

“A a | a B : Bend” by Aszure Barton and Ambrose Akinmusire. Photograph by Lawrence Sumulong

In a YouTube video from a creative residency at Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, Barton described their orientation in making the work, “We are really bending away from our separateness and creating something as a collective, sharing space as a group.”

The lighting and scenery design by Nicole Pearce paints a cool universe and gives visible shape to the convergence of these two distinguished creatives and their collaboration. The black stage space is bounded by two fluorescent arcing tubes of light—one extending upward into space, the other defining the ground. Each arc, though separated by space, bends toward the other. In that upstage space between the apex of each arc sits a DJ booth, atop a circular platform. Jazz trumpeter Ambrose Akinmusire walks onstage wearing a boxy, black sweat jacket and cap and sits down at the control table. A black hooded dancer arrives and sits on the edge of the musician’s circular platform. A sudden deep boom followed by a high, otherworldly pitch activates the dancer into movement. This feels like a voyage on the Starship Enterprise, not a party.

The dancer spins, jumps, grooves, and gesticulates energetically as if conjuring a spell. He opens his arms wide like an invitation that feels slightly sinister. He leaps, falls to the ground in a plank and returns to his feet with a turn, then steps out of this burst of virtuosity casually pulsing his feet to the electronic beat. The arcs of light surge with momentary intensity as eleven more dancers all wearing black Lycra sweats with hoods pulled over their heads (costumes by Rémi van Bochove) arrive. They strike a pose facing upstage, one arm raised.

“A a | a B : Bend” by Aszure Barton and Ambrose Akinmusire. Photograph by Lawrence Sumulong

For sixty minutes the performers dance solos, duets, and in large and small groups—mostly shrouded under their hoods in anonymity. They frequently clump together and move rhythmically in unison from place to place—heads bobbing, shoulders heaving, legs flicking, forearms oscillating—creating a kind of living, breathing, textured organism. Expanding to a large circle, a performer moves to the center and takes to the floor in a brilliant breakdancing riff. The circle dissolves into another formation and another. The vocabulary is a mixture of everything—pedestrian movement, creature-like movement, modern dance, folkdance, voguing, and breaking—pretty much whatever the varied and distinct dancers (all wonderful) bring to the process. And Barton is very much about the process.

I am relieved when the hoods are pulled back and dancers’ faces are visible. I am happier still when dancers appear without their jackets and I see dancers’ skin and muscles—reminding me that they are human and not an unknown life form. These are also moments in the choreography where intimate groups of dancers partner one another in unusual and sensitive ways—stepping on another’s shoulders, upturned palms, or soles of feet—making palpable the density and fragility of the human body.

“A a | a B : Bend” by Aszure Barton and Ambrose Akinmusire. Photograph by Lawrence Sumulong

Throughout the work, dancers take time-outs on the circular platform with Akinmusire. One climbs up to sit still with legs crossed as if in meditation. Another stands performing a movement sequence echoed by a clump of dancers on the ground like a performer at a rock concert. And yet another walks behind Akinmusire for some human interaction, seeming to check on what the maestro is up to.

Akinmusire is a jazz musician skilled in the art of improvisation. He responds in real time to the dancers’ movements, playing electronic music on his laptop and his trumpet. Akinmusire’s and Barton’s shared style of music- and dance-making is a process of inquiry and exchange that simultaneously respects and dismantles classical and contemporary forms—intentionally moving the process away from fixed expectations and dominant patterns.

Eventually, all the dancers congregate on the musician’s platform sitting along its circumference bending their torsos in all directions. They return to dance upon the main floor, expanding their group formation as a very large overhead light globe pulses to life projecting cosmic black and white and sometimes three-dimensional designs upon the stage. Tobin Del Cuore offers more than one of his talents in this production; he is the creator of the amazing video design as well as a dancer.

The energy builds as the dancers lope in a circle around the entire stage, including behind the DJ’s booth. Akinmusire picks up his trumpet and makes it sing. He has saved his soaring trumpet riffs for the end. The dancers split and assume a standing formation that replicates the lower arc of light that bends toward the musician. They stand at attention facing Akinmusire as he brings the final rumble of vibrations to conclusion.

Karen Greenspan

Karen Greenspan is a New York City-based dance journalist and frequent contributor to Natural History Magazine, Dance Tabs, Ballet Review, and Tricycle among other publications. She is also the author of Footfalls from the Land of Happiness: A Journey into the Dances of Bhutan, published in 2019.

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