10 JANUARY 22-28, 2026 westword.com WESTWORD | MUSIC | CAFE | CULTURE | NIGHT+DAY | NEWS | LETTERS | CONTENTS | twelve; by then, she’d become nonverbal from the trauma. “It had a tremendous effect on me,” she admits. “I didn’t know how to talk to anyone about that experience. I couldn’t trust the world. I couldn’t trust my body, how one moment I’d wake up as a healthy child, and the next day I could die. I couldn’t trust anything.” Playing basketball and kickball helped her start coming back into her body, but she didn’t fi nd her creative voice until she started dancing at her family’s dances, where her father, an actor, and her mother, a French horn player, would invite family and friends to dance around the house. “My father and mother were amazing,” she says. “They encouraged us through dance to clean the house, be a team and talk about what we were experiencing. I could express those inner joys, inner fears, inner anger — any- thing. And I think that was the greatest gift I could have.” But she didn’t want to keep it to herself, so she started Cleo Parker Robinson Dance in 1970 at the age of 21. A few months later, her 19-year-old brother, John Whalon Parker, Jr., had a heart attack; a minister, he died sud- denly while sitting at the table and reading the Bible. Parker Robinson says the sudden loss left a hole in her own heart, which was already heavy from recent events in the Civil Rights movement, including the assassina- tion of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. As she observed her mother and her brother’s pregnant wife from her own grief, she realized that they were all mourning in different ways because they’d had different relationships with her brother. This sparked the creation of one of her masterworks, Mary Don’t You Weep, representing how the three Marys (the Virgin Mary, Mary Magdalene and Mary of Clopas) mourned Jesus’s cru- cifi xion and the way people gather, grieve, love and help heal one another. It is a dance of sorrow and mourning, but it’s also part of a larger movement showcasing joy and community support. “When I began to try to heal from all that, it was Mary Don’t You Weep that really helped me,” Parker Robinson says. Martin Luther King Jr. Day was made a fed- eral holiday in 1983, and Colorado fi rst celebrated it in 1984; Parker Robinson would go on to take Mary Don’t You Weep to King’s alma mater, Morehouse College, in 1986, where it was performed for King’s family, Bishop Desmond Tutu, Jesse Jackson, Dick Gregory, Andrew Young and more for the fi rst of- fi cial national observance of the holiday. The Writing on the Wall Today, Mary Don’t You Weep is preserved via la- banotation (an old form of recording choreography) on the exterior walls of the Cleo Parker Robinson Center for the Healing Arts, a powerful emblem for the new facility that’s focused on becoming a spot for the community to gather and heal. Parker Robinson likens it to “urban hi- eroglyphics,” but the labanotation symbols were carefully written out, proofed and approved by dance professors; in the age of video, it’s a little-known and tedious way of transcribing choreography. Having it on the building is decorative and educational, but it’s also functional: The labanotation is set on solar panels that power the new facility. “We had to work together to make sure the visitors don’t see repetition on the facade, and if someone can read the labanotation, they won’t see any mistakes,” says Kahyun Lee, the Fentress principal architect and interior designer for the project who came up with the idea after enrolling her son in a CPRD class and becoming deeply curious about dance and how it’s recorded. Lee was also inspired by the company’s dance Salomés Daughters, which led to the 226 laminated glass fi ns displaying 55 colors and decorating the exterior of the new build- ing above the labanotation. These aren’t the only works of art in- spired by Cleo Parker Robinson dances. A larger-than-life Junkanoo Queen was painted on the wall near the new atrium staircase by Denver illus- trator and designer Jenn Goodrich. The painting is inspired by the Afro- Caribbean Junkanoo King in CPRD’s annual Granny Dances to a Holiday Drum and bears the names of CPRD donors. Meanwhile, Darrell Anderson, a well-known Denver artist and long- time friend of Parker Robinson, created three thirty-by-forty-inch col- ored-pencil drawings on blueprints of the new fa- cility called “Rain Dance Series.” It depicts scenes from CPRD’s Raindance, with dancers moving gracefully in vibrant, fl ow- ing costumes. “A dancer will dance for hours and hours to make movement that turns into music and color, and to land like a feather,” Anderson says. “With construction docu- ments, everything has to be perfect, so you know where things are. So, my attempt was to integrate the two and show some of that process.” Anderson says the artwork will be hang- ing in the new facility, which he sees as a powerful gift to the community. “It’s going to continue to make Cleo Parker Robinson an icon,” he says. “It made our community not only fascinating, but powerful. That’s always been my intent with my artwork. I have the ability to express my emotions through a two-dimensional surface, and she can do it with movement and color.” Bringing in the Heart Early in the mornings, when the sun hits the colorful glass fi ns just right, an array of hues refl ects on the fl oor of the new Marcel- line Freeman Studio. Later in the day, the 28-foot-tall studio becomes vibrant with dancers rehearsing as sunlight streams in. The new facility is full of natural light and colors, with different areas color-coded by function: restrooms are orange, elevator areas are yellow and offi ce spaces on the third fl oor are decorated with purple carpet, because that’s Parker Robinson’s favorite color, Lee says. Viewing windows in the boardroom and Parker Robinson’s offi ce peer into the studios below. Fentress Studios, which is known for its work on Denver International Airport, the Colorado Convention Center and the Den- ver Art Museum, as well as major projects around the world, designed each space to be multi-functional. The electrochromic windows remove the need for curtains and help with temperature control. The theater was built underground, which will also aid in temperature control and soundproofi ng. Fentress Studios founder Curt Fentress, who fi rst went to a CPRD performance al- most fi fty years ago after seeing it listed as a free thing to do in Culture continued from page 8 continued on page 12 The exterior of the new Cleo Parker Robinson Dance Center for the Healing Arts, with the labanotation solar panels and laminated glass fi ns. The Cleo Parker Robinson Dance Ensemble rehearses in one of the new studios. KRISTEN FIORE KRISTEN FIORE
