Assistant Professor of Dance Rachel Barker has been named the 2016 North Carolina Dance Alliance Choreography Fellow. Established in 1982, the North Carolina Dance Alliance awards one choreography fellowship each year to support the creation of new work.
Barker began the new piece, Welcome, this summer. Welcome is a 30-minute trio featuring dancers Caitlyn Swett, Julianna Carson, and Breanne Horne. The work addresses questions about vulnerability in performance and explores improvisation as a creative process. Welcome will premiere in Durham later this year at the North Carolina Dance Alliance Annual Event Showcase.
Barker joined the Department of Dance in Fall 2015 and serves as the Dance Education Coordinator. Her research includes site-specific choreography, and she recently completed an artist residency at Sedona Summer Colony at the Sedona Arts Center and Verde Valley School in Sedona, Arizona, where she worked with choreographer JoAnna Mendl Shaw in site-specific choreographic research.