Created by Amber Funk Barton and Mindy Parfitt. At the Cultch’s Vancity Culture Lab on Wednesday, February 22. Continues until March 4

It’s not often you get to learn a line-dancing routine set to Billy Ray Cyrus’s mindless slice of country cheese “Achy Breaky Heart” at a night out to the theatre.

But am a, a work as small and deeply personal as the title suggests, is all about teaching ourselves to do new things, and pushing us out of our comfort zones.

The dance-theatre show is inspired by scientific concepts of neuroplasticity, in which our brains can change, blazing new pathways with practice.
If that sounds overly scientific, Mindy Parfitt and Amber Funk Barton go to great pains to make sure the show doesn’t play out that way, physically enacting the idea—not just through its line-dancing experiment, but, more importantly, through their own exercises later in the show. We won’t tell you quite what those are, except to hint that Parfitt is a theatre artist who dreams of letting loose her inner ballerina, and Barton is a dancer who’s never had to use her voice on-stage.

The result is an eclectic offering of personal confession, science lesson, and movement, given the added atmosphere of Cande Andrade’s video design and Antoine Bédard’s sound design, both subtly expressive. In one striking scene, Barton speaks about how she’s always expressed herself through dance since she was four, while black-and-white projections of herself twirl beside her. Swimming turns out to be one of Parfitt’s outlets, and a projected figure splashes through pool lanes that stretch up toward the ceiling of the back wall. Two white cupboards on wheels also share time as “screens”, as well as “rooms”.

Some of its neuroplasticity lecturing feels incongruous, but am a is really getting at women’s experiences—their roles, the pressures and fears they put upon themselves.  And on this level, the show digs into some truly deep, honest, and vulnerable terrain. The women talk candidly about body image, aging, and sexual identity, the destructive pathways we can set in our brains, and the way we can try to release ourselves from our worst self-doubts.

Am a has a bit of a disjointed feel, and you may not feel like throwing yourself into its fun-loving dance lesson off the top. But even if confessionals are not your thing, you’ll probably agree; when this show comes together it really connects. The stories here have a truth that most women will recognize on an almost visceral level. Parfitt and Barton are offering themselves up with such likability and honesty that you’ll feel like cheering when they leap fully out of their safe place into wild new realms.

In fact, you’ll be in such a celebratory mood, there’s a good chance you’ll be more than ready to take part in the show’s festive finale. And anything that ends with a champagne-fuelled dance party (this time with Michael Jackson taking the place of Cyrus on the soundtrack) cannot be a bad thing.