John Barker (ballet)

Barker died April 7, 2020, of undisclosed causes in New York. He is buried at the Calverton National Cemetery, in Calverton, New York.

Some of his ballet students include, Kevin Martin, who Barker took to the Moscow Ballet Competition in 1981, Jeff Szuhay, and Linda Williams.

In the 1960s, he opened his own ballet school, the John Barker School of Classical Ballet, located at 154 W 56th Street in New York City, across from Carnegie Hall. When he first started teaching, Barker felt that what he was doing was "primitive" and felt that "there must be some better way" of teaching ballet. In 1967, Barker attended a ballet lesson taught by the Russian ballet master, Alexander Ivanovich Pushkin, where he admitted that watching the class made him want to "learn Russian to speak with him and learn from him how to become a better teacher."

John Barker was a dancer with the Page-Stone Camryn Company, the Chicago Opera Ballet, and the Jose Limon Company. From 1955-1956, he danced with the Juilliard Dance Theater. He also danced with the American Ballet Theater, in numerous summer stock performances of musicals.

He began to study anthropology in the fall of 1954 at the University of Chicago, but discontinued his studies after completing the Spring semester, 1955, in order to join the Chicago Opera Ballet, and begin his career in dance. He was a PFC in the US ARMY/KOREA.

Barker graduated from the Oak Park and River Forest High School in Oak Park Illinois in 1948. He studied ballet as a scholarship student at the Stone-Camryn School in Chicago. He later studied ballet at the School of American Ballet in New York.

Barker was born November 20, 1929 in Oak Park, Illinois. His parents were Charles Munting Barker and Frances Banthin. He had three siblings, Charles, Bruce, and Cathy. His grandfather, John William Barker, and namesake, was a prominent citizen in Maywood, Illinois after arriving from England in the 1880s.