What are you looking at? NATIONAL BALLET dancer Bridgett Zehr strikes a pose in rehearsal

Aszure Barton had a disconcerting experience when she arrived at the National Ballet of Canada to pick out who would be in her new work, Watch her, which the company premieres this week. She used to perform with the National Ballet before she struck out on her own as a choreographer, and here she was sizing up a roomful of dancers who were sizing her up. It made her realize where she was in her own life, career-wise and spiritually.

“I had been away from the company for 13 years,” says Barton, who grew up in Edmonton and is now based in New York. “I felt a familiarity with the environment, but I was observing from a completely different perspective. I realized there are other things much bigger than myself, that I’m a channel for the work, the same as the dancers, versus it being about who Aszure Barton is.”

Barton says her own name with the emphasis of someone who recognizes she’s become a force to be reckoned with in the world of dance. Mentored by Mikhail Baryshnikov, whom she casually calls “Misha,” she’s choreographed for Les Ballets Jazz de Montréal, where she was the resident choreographer for several years, as well as the American Ballet Theatre, The Juilliard School and The Martha Graham Dance Company, among others. Between August and the end of the year, she will have premiered four new works at four different companies. (And had her appendix removed, continuing to “[choreograph] from [the hospital], telling my assistant how to resolve certain things.”)

The word “uncompromising” comes up a lot when you read about Barton, and she admits that she’s made an effort in the last few years to make the creative process a two-way street. “I’m trying not to feel like I have to be in control all the time. I surrendered to the fact that it is much better to be open to things.”

In doing so, she’s opened herself up to what the dancers can bring — how they turn her ideas into movement. That first meeting with the dancers had given her the theme for the piece: watching and being watched. On the first day of rehearsals, rather than have the dancers showing her how high they can jump, Barton started simple. She had character artist Kevin Bowles sit in a chair and go through a series of positions where he was observing and being observed. Principal dancer Sonia Rodriguez joined him and gradually Barton figured out the voyeuristic moves on which she built the rest of the choreography. Featuring 38 dancers, all of whom have a role, Watch her will debut alongside modern repertoire classics from George Balanchine and Jerome Robbins. “I can’t believe I’m on the program, but all three are big ensemble pieces, so it’s going to be a big evening.”

About a year ago, a friend had suggested the music, an arrangement by Russian composer Lera Auerbach based on a work by 18th-century Italian composer Giovanni Battista Pergolesi. Barton added it to her growing stack of musical possibilities and became obsessed with the vocal version. At first, its sacred nature scared her away. “I thought there’s no way in hell I can make work to this because it’s too beautiful,” she says. But her desire to be more open, to celebrate what’s there in front of her, finally won out. “Why be afraid?” she asks. “You’ve got to do what feels right.”