In the heart of Denver, a cultural fusion is about to unfold on stage. Cleo Parker Robinson, a fixture in the city's dance world for over five decades, is bringing a taste of Brazil — and a peek into her archives — to the Ellie Caulkins Opera House on Saturday and Sunday.
"It's going to be really full of everything,” explained Robinson. “Music, dance, drama and fabulous dancers. They've been working like mad."
The special program includes three reconstructed pieces: Robinson's own "My Bahia", which she calls “a prayerful opening” with choreography inspired by her own travels in Brazil and by her mentor, Katherine Dunham; “Divinities,” a work by Carlos Dos Santos, previously performed in New York; and the centerpiece of the evening, “Orfeu Negro,” or "Black Orpheus," by Mestre Jelon Vieira.
Robinson describes "Orfeu Negro" as a Greek love story with a Brazilian twist. “It's really luscious. You learn a lot about the Orisha divinities through folk movements, capoeira, and ballet. It's magical."
The rarity of these performances, particularly "Black Orpheus," adds to their significance. The company debuted the ballet twenty years ago at the Newman Center, and Robinson, who’s been spending a lot of time in her archives preparing for this production, said it’s “very seldom” that the company remounts one of its older pieces.
“After we premiere something in Colorado and take it on tour, if it's no longer on the touring schedule, it sometimes dies. So I'm glad to give more life to it," she said.
This revival also aligns with Robinson's mission of passing on a cultural legacy to younger dancers.
"I have dancers who haven't traveled the world with the company as I did in the earlier days," she explained, so this performance offers an opportunity for them to embody the company's global experiences.
The timing of the concert coincides with Cleo Parker Robinson’s preparations to move to a new building. Robinson views this as a transitional moment for the company.
"I wanted to make sure we were taking the spirit from our old house into the new house. So I'm revisiting the places that are the root of our organization. And Brazil was really one of them," she said.
Robinson said that, at a moment of deep cultural divisions, the programming of this concert is a very intentional effort to use dance to transcend boundaries and bring people together.
“It's so much more fun to dance and sing and hug and carry on, and to respect each other's work and perspectives than to try to bring people down," she said. "We get to transform together, we get to become together, and I think we need it, especially at this time of elections and challenges in our communities."
Black Orpheus has two shows this weekend at the Ellie Caulkins Opera House at the Denver Center for the Performing Arts: 7 p.m. on Saturday and a matinee at 2 p.m. on Sunday.
