Gauthier Dance Juniors & Barak Marshall: Barker

Theaterhaus, Stuttgart
July 11, 2025

Barker by Los Angeles-born Israeli choreographer Barak Marshall, tells the story of a group of household servants from obediently doing everything that unseen and unheard of mistress Mrs Siegrun’s demands, to downright rebellion. Created with and danced by Gauthier Dance Juniors, the second company of the Theaterhaus’ much admired ensemble, it’s full of boundless energy, fine dancing and pretty impressive acting. Toss in some very creative imagery, humour, and several dashes of audience participation, and you have fifty minutes that’s hugely enjoyable.

When we first meet the six dancers, they’re a little demoralised. Dressed in Gudrun Schretzmeier’s timeless costumes of blue dresses for the women and brown trousers and shirts for the men, and everyone in aprons, they’re somewhat down trodden. As footsteps echo through the space, they start to clean around those in the front row, not with a lot of enthusiasm, it has to be said.

But Barker is no gloomy, bleak, below the stairs social drama. Freedom of expression and the authentic voice of the six is never far away. And when the sounds of lively Balkan music kicks in, we discover they have a very different side. Their dance shouts who they really are (the title is a reference to traditional English market criers).

Marshall’s entrance into choreography in 1995 may have been entirely accidental, but it says much about his talent that only four years later he was he was invited by Ohad Naharin to be Batsheva Dance Company’s first-ever house choreographer. That lineage shows. As with most other ensemble dance in the work, the choreography is fast and intensely physical. It flies through the space, the dancers moving with all the precision and energy it demands.

Grumbles about their employer’s demands, especially it seems for coffee, eventually turn to disobedience and open revolt. Cue the red flags of revolution which swirl and wave in a dramatic dance to music by Khachaturian as they fully assert themselves.

The production repeatedly involves the audience, most innovatively as part of a ‘birth to death’ sequence when a few are brought on stage to participate in a brilliantly grotesque scene with the cast that involves some sat on chairs dresses as black-robed nursemaids while oversize-faces of their would be charges stare out. To the strains of ‘The Internationale’, many are later encouraged to clean the stage, the downtrodden servants suddenly turning into those in authority.

Here and elsewhere, Marshall’s use of music is not short on irony. It’s also incredibly eclectic, elsewhere including Tommy Dorsey, Balkan Beat Box, The Barry Sisters, Sam Medoff and The Yiddish Swingtet and Shandor’s Violin and His Gypsy Orchestra to name just some.

Barker is all just a little bit bonkers but then, as Marshall observed correctly during a brief chat after an earlier rehearsal, so is life. Very expressive in both vocals and movement, it’s also extremely entertaining.

It suits the young dancers brilliantly. The cast of Rebecca Amoroso, Rong Chang, Atticus Dobbie, Garance Goutard-Dekeyser, Joan Jansana Escobedo and Mathilde Roberge were quite simply terrific. They are a wonderfully open bunch that you cannot avoid taking an instant liking to.

Even younger performers also gave an enthusiastic, energetic showing during the pre-show curtain-raiser by dancers of the Colours Youth Project.

At the Colours International Dance Festival, Barker was presented in the venue’s Sports Hall with the audience sat on three sides. The set is no more than a few moveable screens. It’s all set up perfectly for the future intended tour of Stuttgart schools. But it deserves to go further, even to be seen internationally.

Barker was presented as part of Colours International Dance Festival 2025.