Sara Harton in NPAFE’s words…

Sara Harton

…A Quebec City native whose hometown today is Montreal, Sara Harton is the personification of dance patience and performance. Dance thought as well as dance action. And a firm not-just-anything-will-do opinion about how technology should be used to record dance that actually breaks through the fourth wall to present dance performance as if it were live.

…No wonder Harton today is a much-sought-after creator of choreography both live and in video form. Having begun her professional dance career in the mid-2000s with Ballets Jazz de Montréal in works of Azsure Barton, Rodrigo Pederneiras, Crystal Pite and Mauro Bigonzetti, she has since been chosen time and again by major choreographers to carry their vision forth to domestic and international audiences.

Sara Harton and David Rancourt

…Today an independent artist collaborating with various artists, companies, but also schools as teacher, assistant choreographer, choreographer and filmmaker, Harton is breaking new ground by researching as well as recording contemporary dance movement in video format. Her target: videography that can actually touch the viewer’s body as well as the viewer’s mind.

…As was the case with many performers locked out of live performance during the pandemic, Harton made a deep dive into learning how the camera could be used much more effectively to record dance in ways that would excite audiences.

Sara Harton with Arthur Morel Van Hyfte

…Harton went much farther than most to research what could go right or wrong. She quickly came to believe that if video and dance really were to break through that fourth wall, whoever was holding the camera had to sense much more than what might be a clever shot. Instead, the camera person had to feel the same passion as the performers themselves.

…Why were the dancers moving? What story were they telling? Why were they telling it? If the cameraperson were not one of those telling that story, Harton soon realized, then the venture would fail.

Scene from “Les Proies Meutries-Hier”

…Thus it was that the pandemic saw the release of Harton’s 2020 evocative immersive dance video, “Les Proies Meutries-Hier”,** a story anchored in the truth of Harton’s being physically attacked in London in which videographer Paolo Santos and his camera in almost every sense joined with Harton, Marie-France Jacques and Marie-Eve Quilicot moving as the fourth performer and becoming part of the story itself.

…Today, this prolific Montreal imagineer believes that with careful research into motive as well as movement can dance videomaking be employed not only to allow the viewer to be touched by the dancer’s storytelling by movement but also to allow the dancer, either when the video is being recorded or when watching the final product afterwards, to sense what the viewer may be feeling.

Scene from “Les Proies Meutries-Hier”

…For Harton and for us, that is what breaking through the fourth wall is really all about. And if there’s anyone who can make this magic happen, it surely is the very same Sara Harton who Canadians, Americans, and people all around the world have come to know and respect both for her remarkable creativity and for never-say-die inner drive and tenacity to make it all happen.

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