Level: Intermediate +

It is your responsibility to sign up only for classes for which you meet the minimum skill requirements.

Combining their contemporary, modern and urban influences, together Amber Funk Barton and Josh Martin teach a class that challenges its participants using various techniques as well as improvisation. The class aims to reinforce and strengthen fundamental technique, such as the articulation of the spine, limbs and joints and the connection of weight to the floor during warm up and progresses to transfer that knowledge into floor work, drills and movement through space that is both athletic and physically precise, using both choreography and/or improvisational tasks.   

RELATED EVENT:
Amber Funk Barton and Josh Martin at the NAC, October 23-25.

AMBER FUNK BARTON

Born and raised in Vancouver, Amber received her training with Goh Ballet Academy, Arts Umbrella, The Banff Centre Dance Training and Ballet British Columbia’s Mentor Programme. Upon completion of her training, she decided to establish herself as a professional dance artist in Vancouver and has danced for various companies and choreographers, such as Joe INK, LINK dance, Judith Marcuse Projects, Lola Dance, Marta Marta House of Pride, Mascall Dance, MovEnt, Battery Opera, Karen Jamieson Dance Company, MOVE: the company, Ruckus Company Productions, Mark Godden, Dana Gingras, Marla Eist, Jennifer Clarke, Emily Molnar, Wen Wei Wang, Cori Caulfield and Lina Fitzner.

Amber has also been featured as a guest artist with the 605 Collective. In 2008, Amber established her own Vancouver-based contemporary dance company, the response. She recently premiered her third full-length work, The Art of Stealing, in May 2014 at the Firehall Arts Centre.

JOSH MARTIN

Originally from Alberta, Josh is a diversely trained dance artist with a career-to-date that has led him across North America and Europe, studying and performing in many genres along the way. Josh works primarily as Artistic Co-Director of 605 Collective, a collaborative group of dance artists producing new contemporary dance works in a shared creative process, often touring throughout Canada and into the US. As a performer and collaborator, he has also worked with many contemporary dance companies and independent choreographers such as Amber Funk Barton (the response.), Martha Carter (mmHOP), Day Helesic (MovEnt), Gail Lotenberg (LINK Dance), Karen Jamieson, Dana Gingras, Tiffany Tregarthen and David Raymond (Out Innerspace Dance Theatre), Vannessa Goodman (The Contingency Plan), Wen Wei Wang (Wen Wei Dance), and as a past company member of Le Groupe Dance Lab in Ottawa, under the direction of Peter Boneham.

His solo work has been performed in Vancouver, Portland, Seattle, Stuttgart (Winning 1st Prize for Choreography at the 2014 Internationales Solo-Tanz-Theatre Festival in Germany) and will be presented as part of the National Arts Centre's 2014/15 season in Ottawa. Off the stage, he serves on the Artistic Advisory Committee for The Dance Centre in Vancouver, and as Chair of the Canadian Alliance of Dance Artists – BC Chapter. Josh is the recipient of Vancouver’s 2013 Mayor’s Arts Award – Emerging Dance Category.