A short time after Cleo Parker Robinson was awarded the National Medal of Arts in 2021 — along with the four other founders of the International Association of Blacks in Dance — she did a little dance in the White House. No surprise, really: Even at 75, the Denver-based choreographer and cultural doyen is so often in motion.
One afternoon last week, Robinson was sitting a few rows up in the theater at the historic Shorter AME Church in Five Points — the home of her titular dance company — watching the Cleo II dancers rehearse “Roll Me Through the Rushes.” She didn’t fidget but she did lean in several times, making appreciative sounds, emitting thoughtful hmms, articulating beats to herself and very occasionally offering suggestions to the dancers.
“Rushes” is one of three pieces that Robinson choreographed for her momentous Spiritual Suite, created early in the life of the dance company and dance academy, now in their 54th year. “Rushes,” “Mary Don’t You Weep and “To My Father’s House” are set to be performed at the upcoming Mother’s Day concert. Also on the program: associate artistic director Winifred Harris’ “When Wet Came to Paper,” which celebrates even as it mourns the life of early ensemble member Charles Fraser (“the engineer who became a dancer,” Robinson likes to boast); and David Roussève’s “One Nation Under a Groove,” a response to the racially motivated bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Ala., that killed four girls in 1963.
The weekend’s program is called “Legacy: Opening the Way.” And the timing could not be more apt, as Robinson continues to champion the works of Black choreographers and dancers, honor the history of dance in the African Diaspora, and build on the culture of the city where she grew up. And, in the neighborhood that forged her love of the arts, no less: Five Points.
On May 15, Robinson will break ground on the Cleo Parker Robinson Center for Healing Arts. Set to open in September 2025, the 25,000-square-foot building will be adjacent to the historic stone church that sits at the corner of Park Avenue West and 19th Street. Imagined by Fentress Architects (designers of Denver’s snowy-peaked airport terminal and, more recently, the Denver Arts Museum’s welcome center), the new building includes a theater, reception area, rehearsal space, offices and classrooms.
Passersby will see the high-glass atrium of Studio A. And, in a gesture that reaches for the visually eloquent and historically beguiling, the solar panels on the building’s east side wall will contain the labanotation of parts of “Mary Don’t You Weep,” a piece Robinson created in response to the deaths of Martin Luther King Jr. and her younger brother. Labanotation is a method of marking dance movements on paper. It resembles a musical score, but its patterns may also evoke the graphic richness of kente cloth.
Inspired by the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s and ’70s, Robinson’s lineage runs deep. She studied and danced with iconic choreographer Katherine Dunham. CPRD owns the rights to more than 30 of the works of choreographer Donald McKayle, the singular sensation who directed and choreographed the Tony Award-winning musicals “Raisin” and “Sophisticated Ladies.” Some of the dancers and choreographers who are forging or have forged their own paths, having come through Cleo Parker Robinson Dance, include: Gary Abbott, co-founder of Chicago’s Deeply Rooted Dance Theater; choreographer Nejla Y. Yatkin; much-celebrated choreographer Leni Wylliams (who was killed in 1996); and, locally, Terrell Davis, founder of Davis Contemporary Dance and Jacob Mora of Moraporvida Dance.
Robinson doesn’t much dwell on tales of her own artistic process — at least not in ways that emphasize the nuts and bolts of her craft. Instead, she’s more likely to sing the praises of collaboration and of her collaborators, among them Denver Symphony maverick Marin Alsop, Gordon Parks, Maya Angelou and Julie Belafonte (wife of Harry Belafonte and a dancer in Katherine Dunham’s company).
Robinson chose to celebrate CPRD’s 50th anniversary (made bumpier but not upended by the pandemic) with a virtual performance of two works that leaned into poetry — “Lush Life” (Angelou) and “Run Sister Run” (Nikki Giovanni) — a nod to the poetic roots of the Black Arts Movement and a tradition hardwired into the company from its start. Poet and cultural maven Schyleen Qualls, who co-founded the company with Cleo Parker Robinson and Tom Robinson, the choreographer’s late husband, returns next weekend to read her poems as well as Giovanni’s “The Women Gather.”
It’s a signature of Robinson’s approach that her art and her trust in collaboration cannot be teased apart. “I don’t know what it is to do anything alone. I don’t know what that is. But I do think … that unity is an underlining necessity for my survival,” she told The Denver Post last summer. “I [do] know that what I’m creating is an opportunity for people to sort of commune in the highest ways.” At the time, she was in rehearsals for a dual show of hers and the young Norwegian choreographer Thomas Tawala Presto at the Ellie Caulkins Opera House.
“I marvel at how collaborative Cleo is during the choreographic process. Everyone has ego, and I’ve seen her both remain fiercely true to her vision and experience while making space for other creative collaborators to shine,” CPRD’s president and CEO Malik Robinson (the choreographer’s son) wrote in an email. The response was to a question about his mother for an extended oral history interview that will be part of the New York Public Library’s Jerome Robbins Dance Division’s Oral History Project.
“I think Cleo is a critical component of the history of Black Dance in America, something that not enough people in Denver really appreciate,” Gary Steuer, president and CEO of the Bonfils-Stanton Foundation, an arts funding powerhouse, wrote in an email. “It is a legacy that stretches from Katherine Dunham to Alvin Ailey to Cleo and a handful of others who are connected to those origins, like PHILADANCO.”
For all that heft, there can be, at times, a prophets-without-honor quality to a city’s understanding and appreciation of luminaries, even ones who shine brightly like Robinson. (Broncos, Avs and Nuggets stars prove the exceptions.) The new building should go a long way in correcting that myopia.
Last spring, a group of supporters, including then-mayor Michael Hancock, gathered on a parcel of grass on the east side of the church to partake in a kind of festive, spiritual “ground blessing” that felt pure Robinson. Guests could not get out of dancing.
According to CPRD, 91 percent of the fundraising goal of its more than $20 million capital campaign has been met as of April 30. The funds reflect a mix of government, foundation and individual giving. Even the builder, Mortensen construction, contributed $200,000 to the new center, which will meet ADA guidelines. And Fentress Architects provided its predesign services pro bono.
Folks are showing up. But then, the seemingly tireless Robinson is always showing up. A few weeks ago, she attended a show of the Brooklyn-based ensemble Urban Bush Woman at the Newman Center, itself a local bastion for national and international dance performance. The next day, she flew to Kansas City, Mo., to honor Jawole Willa Jo Zollar, the founder of that vibrant group, and to visit the unique organization Kansas City Friends of Alvin Ailey.
Earlier this week, Robinson slipped into the final dress rehearsal and media night for local choreographer Garrett Ammon’s captivating Wonderbound show “Sam and Delilah.” Before the lights dimmed, she gushed some at the dance company’s beautifully renovated digs in an industrial section of north Park Hill. “Look at those curtains … I think these seats retract,” she said like a woman about to embark on her own building.
Then after the show, she took a moment to talk with Ammon and Wonderbound president Dawn Fay. But not before making sure that lighting designer Karalyn “Star” Pytel, who’d been sitting nearby, knew what great work she’d done.
Robinson is always talking the talk, walking the walk and, yes, dancing the dance.
Lisa Kennedy is a Denver-based freelance writer specializing in film and theater.