Rachel Barker is a dance-maker, teacher, and performer from Salt Lake City, Utah. Her dance film, Sedimented Here, was selected as one of just 16 finalists in the Dance Camera West festival, official selection for the San Francisco Dance Film Festival, and has received awards from the Red Rocks Film Festival and Mexico City Videodance Festival, among multiple other official selections. She is the recipient of the Alfred Lambourne Prize for Movement for her film, Sand Body Sky (2020).
Her choreography has been presented at the Breaking Ground Festival, Seattle International Dance Festival, the North Carolina Dance Festival, Dixon Place Theater, On Site/In Site Festival, Red Rocks Dance Festival, American College Dance Festival Gala Concert, and venues throughout Utah, Washington, and Ohio. Most recently, Barker presented her work in a self-produced evening of dance, entitled “Superwomen”, which was met with a series of glowing reviews, including the Utah Review stating “Just seven minutes long, Barker’s Sedimented Here stands out as one of the most impressive of the genre that The Utah Review has screened.” Rachel was selected as a choreographer for the Repertory Dance Theater (RDT) Regalia Competition in Salt Lake City, UT (2020) and has been commissioned to set work on Bellingham Repertory Dance Theater (2021). She has held a choreographic residency at Sedona Arts Center, Arizona. Barker was featured in Authority Magazine in the article “The Five Things You Need to Shine in the Entertainment Industry” (April 2021).
Barker has served as an Assistant Professor of Dance at Brigham Young University and University of North Carolina at Charlotte, during which she created multiple choreographic works with the students, in addition to teaching a variety of courses. She has also taught at Wake Forest University, Denison University, the American College Dance Festival at Gonzaga University and the University of Utah, and Ohio University. Barker has presented her pedagogical research at the National Dance Education Organization Conference (NDEO) from 2015-2022.
Her article, “Educator, Artist, Researcher: A Synergistic Relationship” was published in the Dance Education In Practice journal, December 2018. Rachel’s artistic work has been supported by the Utah Arts Division of Museum and Sciences, LDS Center for the Arts, Brigham Young University, University of North Carolina at Charlotte, The North Carolina Alliance, The Ohio State University.
Barker has performed the work of artists Bebe Miller, John Jasperse, Keith Johnson, Cyrus Khambatta, and Donna Uchizono, among others. She holds an MFA in Dance from The Ohio State University (three-year University fellowship recipient), an MAT from Westminster College, and a BFA in Modern Dance from the University of Utah.