Andrea Peña + Amara Barner

Amara Barner is a BIPOC multidisciplinary artist from Minnesota, who currently resides in Montréal. As a teenager she traveled as an assistant to the choreographers of The PULSE on Tour, Intrigue Dance Intensive, as well as Emma Portner. Among these opportunities for professional development, Amara was granted opportunities to perform and teach at workshops in Australia, Mexico, England, and Italy. After moving to New York City at 16, Amara trained locally and worked commercially, such as dancing backup for Sia on The Tonight Show With Jimmy Fallon. At 18 years old, Barner was the youngest dancer ever hired for Montréal dance company RUBBERBAND. She performed and toured internationally with the company from 2016 to 2021 in the show Vic’s Mix, as well as the premiere and following international tours of Ever So Slightly. Amara went on to perform the work of artists such as Anne Plamondon, Dana Gingras/Animals of Distinction, and Elon Höglund/Tentacle Tribe. Barner’s versatility allows her to work in both the concert dance realm as well as the commercial circuit. She performed in the Québec version of The Masked Singer in seasons one and two, as well as in music videos such as La Force’s All That I Am, Aisha Bahdru’s Lazy River, Dominique Fils-Aimé’s Mind at Ease, and sickxsense’s Make Believe. Amara was featured in Dance Magazine’s July 2020 issue as an artist “On The Rise”, and has also been interviewed for the podcast Artistic Roots and the digital magazine Black Lights. Amara presented her first multidisciplinary solo entitled mongrel in 2021 and later adapted it for gallery exhibition in 2022, and finally premiered a stage version in 2024 at Tangente’s LABdiff 2. She also won the Emerging Artist prize from Festival Quartiers Danses in 2023 for her multidisciplinary work The Songbird Dreams of Singing. Amara is currently a faculty member at USA dance conventions Intrigue Dance Intensive and Luminous. She is also a contemporary dance instructor at Danse à la Carte, where she shares her personally developed movement practice, Soft Chaos.

Originating from Bogota, Colombia, and having honed her practice in the territory of Tiohti:áke, Montréal, Andrea Peña is a prolific Latinx artist who has built international renown as a designer, choreographer and director of the multidisciplinary company AP&A (Andrea Peña & Artists). With a background in design and fashion, Andrea is a definitively multifaceted visionary who works seamlessly across mediums. Rooted in extensive research and choreographic knowledge, she creates unique living universes that unify bodies and materials in performative, digital and sculptural environments. Andrea’s artistic rigor has been recognized by numerous awards, including the BalletBC Choreographer Award 2024, whilst in 2023 she was the winner of the first international La Biennale di Venezia dance co-production. Complex, vulnerable and raw, her work has been commissioned by TanzKassel, National Arts Centre, Centre PHI, SAT, and Ballet Edmonton. She has presented work at prestigious institutions and festivals across the world, including Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, Mattress Factory Museum Pittsburg, Tanz Bremen, tanzmesse, Theatre Freiburg, Tokyo Performing Arts Meeting, Attakkalari India Biennial, Milano Festival, Hong Kong International Choreography Festival, Festival Internacional de Danza de la Ciudad de México, Prisma Festival Panama, AADK Spain, and IONION Arts Center Greece, to name but a few.