Aszure Barton, choreographer and director
Ambrose Akinmusire, composer, electronics, and trumpet
Two leading lights in their fields—choreographer Aszure Barton and composer Ambrose Akinmusire—create an urgent, intimate yet wildly provocative world in which dancers and musician come together onstage in a thrilling embrace of human friction, tension, and explosive beauty. Barton is known for mining complex emotional terrain in her works, as in her smash hit Mere Mortals at San Francisco Ballet in 2024. She “offers an entire world, full of surprise and humor, emotion and pain, expressed through a dance vocabulary that takes ballet technique and dismantles it to near-invisibility” (The New York Times). Oakland’s own Akinmusire, “a trumpeter of deep expressive resources and a composer of kaleidoscopic vision” (NPR Music), performs his instrumental and electronics score live.
“It’s magical. You can’t take your eyes off it. And you can’t get enough of this declaration of love for being together, which continually invents new patterns to explain itself… [In B E N D] the soul finds enough air to listen carefully”—tanznetz
This event is part of Cal Performances’ Illuminations: “Innocence & Experience” programming for the 2026–27 season.
Major Support: Nadine Tang
Program notes will be available approximately one week before the performance.
Fri, Dec 4, 7:30pm
Sat, Dec 5, 7:30pm
There is a $20 service charge on all subscription orders, and a $15 per order service charge on ticket purchases made by phone or online that are not part of a subscription package. There is no fee for tickets purchased in person at the Zellerbach Hall Ticket Office unless they are part of a subscription.
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2026–27 Season Guides
Some of you want your mind blown. Some want your heart broken. Some want to see a legend before they stop touring. Whatever brings you through those doors, we’ve built a guide for it. Explore the six patron guides below to find the performances that were made for you!
Fri, Dec 4, 7:30pm
Sat, Dec 5, 7:30pm
There is a $20 service charge on all subscription orders, and a $15 per order service charge on ticket purchases made by phone or online that are not part of a subscription package. There is no fee for tickets purchased in person at the Zellerbach Hall Ticket Office unless they are part of a subscription.
2026–27 Season Subscriptions go on sale noon May 5
Single tickets for 2026–27 Season events go on sale at noon Aug 11
