Amara Barner

Amara Barner is a BIPOC, multidisciplinary artist from Minnesota, who currently resides in Montreal, Quebec. 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 Montreal dance company, RUBBERBAND. She performed and toured internationally with the company from 2016-2021 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 Quebec 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 Make Believe by sickxsense. 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 March of 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.

Photo: Emelle Massariol