8 JANUARY 22-28, 2026 westword.com WESTWORD | MUSIC | CAFE | CULTURE | NIGHT+DAY | NEWS | LETTERS | CONTENTS | The Next Step AFTER FIVE DECADES, CLEO PARKER ROBINSON HAS DANCED HER COMPANY INTO A BIG NEW HEALING ARTS CENTER. BY KRISTEN FIORE Dancing has always been a spiritual experi- ence for Cleo Parker Robinson, so it makes sense that she found a home for her company inside a church. The 55-year-old Denver dance institution has operated out of the Historic Shorter AME Church in Five Points since 1987. More than a hundred years before that, the building was one of the fi rst African American churches established in Colorado. It was destroyed by an arson fi re linked to the KKK in 1925 and rebuilt the following year. By the time Parker Robinson moved in, it had been vacant for a few years, had pigeons living in it and needed repairs. Thanks to an agreement with then- property owner Denver Housing Authority, Cleo Parker Robinson Dance was able to rent the building for $1 a year, which allowed the nonprofi t to retrofi t the church into a dance rehearsal and performance space, then even- tually purchase the building in 2021. Dance companies don’t normally last as long as CPRD has, but CPRD isn’t a normal dance company. Over the decades, its facil- ity has been used for classes, rehearsals and performances — not just for CPRD, but other local arts organizations as well. “I never thought we’d outgrow the Shorter AME,” Parker Robinson says. “We serve a lot of different communities and arts organizations that use it, and that’s a wonderful thing because it makes it very vital, but we don’t always have ac- cess to our own space.” Now there will be plenty of space for everyone. The $25-mil- lion, 25,000-square-foot Cleo Parker Robinson Dance Center for the Healing Arts opened of- fi cially on January 17, next to the Shorter AME space, after years of planning and about 18 months of construction. The expansion was funded by a $4 million Community Revitaliza- tion grant from Colorado Cre- ative Industries, as well as tax credits and contributions from individuals and foundations. The building was designed by Fentress Studios, a Populus Company, and con- structed by Mortenson. It includes four new dance studios; a big lobby, atrium and cafe area; windows made of electrochromic glass; solar energy panels to power the new facility; an administrative fl oor; a new state- of-the-art theater with retractable seats, a permanent Marley fl oor, stage structures built for aerial dance rigging, and more. The expansion doubles the dance center’s capac- ity; the old space will be used, too. Parker Robinson is excited to expand the company’s healing arts offerings; that effort has been an important part of her life since child- hood. The dance icon got her degree in psychology, education and dance from Colorado Women’s College in 1968, and for decades has built CPRD programming on somatic movement, collabora- tion with psychologists, and workshops and conferences based in healing. “You’re using every part of who you are: Your mind, your body, your spirit, your emotions,” Parker Robinson explains. “And therefore, it’s almost like a cleansing. Any- thing that’s in your mind, any- thing that’s in your body, gets cleared away for that moment of time when you dance. ...It’s such a celebration, of being in the moment, of being alive with someone else. ...And when you feel like you’re liv- ing, you want to be here, and that’s the healing part.” She would know. Dancing Through It Parker Robinson was born in Five Points, only a few blocks from her dance studio, to a Black father and a white mother in 1948. She remembers her family being followed by the police and having insults thrown at them, but things got even darker when she was ten, and her parents separated briefl y. Parker Robinson moved with her mother and siblings to then-segregated Dallas, where her grandparents lived. “That was traumatic,” Parker Robinson recalls. “I was a child who didn’t understand why the world works like this, why my mother could go certain places and we couldn’t.” One of the only bright spots was going to church, where her mother was accepted de- spite being the only white woman there. With the rest of her life so chaotic, Parker Robinson found comfort in the structure there. “It was like choreographing a village,” she says. “You had the children, and the teenagers, and the elders, and the deacons. Everybody had a place.” This would later inspire the chore- ography for her dance, My Father’s House, and her efforts to open the doors of her dance studio to anyone and everyone. While in Dallas, Parker Robinson fell ill and her kidneys began to shut down. The local hospital was segregated and turned her away. By the time she was admitted to a hospital, “my heart had stopped,” she says. Doctors suspected she’d spend the rest of her life bedridden, but her parents encouraged her to keep moving. The family reunited in Denver when Parker Robinson was CULTURE continued on page 10 KEEP UP ON DENVER ARTS AND CULTURE AT WESTWORD.COM/ARTS “Rain Dance Series” by Darrell Anderson. From left to right: Kahyun Lee, Brian Fitzpatrick, Curt Fentress, Cleo Parker Robinson, Malik Robinson and Tori Vendegna celebrate the opening of the new facility. DARRELL ANDERSON KRISTEN FIORE
