T.S. Warren
Dancer-choreographers Amber Funk Barton and Shay Kuebler shake up the Status Quo at the Canada Dance Festival
So you think you can dance?
Between them, Vancouver dancers Amber Funk Barton and Shay Kuebler have already chalked up almost half a century of training and experience. She’s 29 and he’s 26, and both started at age 4, she in ballet and contemporary, he in theatre followed by martial arts, dance and hip-hop.
That dedication and diversity just might help explain why the two independent dancer-choreographers are on the leading edge of Vancouver’s contemporary urban dance scene where they’re hailed for their risky physicality, refined moves and visceral emotion.
A stroke of genius brings these West Coasters to the Canada Dance Festival (June 4-12) where each will present a solo plus their first collaborative work together, Status Quo, based on the notion of channel surfing and media saturation.
“When we created Status Quo, it was just about how far we could challenge ourselves and the dancers to the point of physical and emotional exhaustion,” explains a friendly and articulate Funk Barton (her real name) on the phone from Vancouver. A quartet danced by she and Kuebler, as well as Josh Martin and Manuel Sorge, the 60-minute work constantly switches scenes as the music shuttles between a playlist that includes Madlib, Talkdemonic and Beef Terminal.
“I’m the old lady of the crew,” she laughs. “I call myself grandma sometimes, [surrounded by] all these young guys throwing themselves around in mid-air like they’re superheroes. I know I’m not old yet but I can feel the shift happening
a little bit sometimes.”
Status Quo was first performed in 2008 at Vancouver’s Dancing on the Edge Festival, which had commissioned the piece.
The commission formally brought the talented duo together, but they had known each other as dancers with Funk Barton’s company The Response, sometimes sharing the same program with Kuebler’s company, the 605 Collective, or even dancing in each other’s work.
Hero and Heroine, their latest work together, will be premiered in Vancouver this summer, and Funk Barton credits their diverse backgrounds for providing fertile common ground for their creative partnership.
“We both had an interest in, for lack of a better expression, ‘fusion of movement,’ how we can just bring everything that we had been given or trained with. Along with that movement quality, there’s also a really high energy and athleticism, and very, very physically driven work.”
Perhaps even more importantly, both dancers strongly believe in what she calls “honest movement” that’s not style driven: “Movement that not only dancers can appreciate, but anybody from any walk of life can appreciate and grab on to.”
She says she feels honoured to be able to perform their choreography at the Canada Dance Festival.
“You just want to make this great piece, to entertain and move people, but at the same time you have to be honest, you can’t be something you’re not. That’s how I feel. You have to feel true to you.”
The Response presents Status Quo
@ National Arts Centre Studio, June 11, 7 p.m.
UP-CLOSE AND PERSONAL
Unrecognizable under a blond wig that covers her face, the irrepressible Susie Burpee is back to dazzle the town with a new absurdist one-woman show. A Mass Becomes You is the title and it casts the award-winning Toronto-based performer as a frenetic woman in a sexed-up power suit surrounded by dozens of blaring boom-boxes massacring Mozart’s Requiem in D minor.
Inspired by a disturbing self-portrait by American photographer Cindy Sherman (#122), Burpee has taken her out of the frame with a work that could be about “blond ambition” or even the social implications of the covered female face. As festival director Brian Webb noted in his fest blog, Burpee is one of those dancers who totally “goes for it.”
Catch Burpee June 9, 4 p.m., at the black-box Nouvelle Sc?ne on King Edward Avenue, an oasis of up-close and personal dance innovation during the power-packed nine-day Canada Dance Festival.
Hybridizing trendsetters like Montreal’s Martin B?langer and St?phane Gladyszewski perform at Nouvelle Sc?ne as well as boundary breakers Byron Chief Moon of Coyote Percussive Arts and Toronto’s Nova Bhattacharya with her new series of contemporary solos, Isolated Incidents.
Toronto’s Michael Trent and Montreal’s k.g. Guttman, who are, like Burpee, alumni of Ottawa’s legendary Le Groupe Dance Lab, combine their choreographic talents with Dancemakers, the Toronto company Trent heads as artistic director. Called Double Bill #2, the new work is aptly described as “a conversation about the pleasure of dance.”
Full schedule: www.canadadance.ca