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<\/p>\nOn a summer afternoon, Norwegian choreographer Thomas Talawa Prest\u00f8 was watching as two dancers from his Oslo-based company, Tabanka Dance Ensemble, put another dance company\u2019s artists through the paces of one of his new works. Bob Marley played over the speaker system in the rehearsal room of the Five Points home of Cleo Parker Robinson Dance. Prest\u00f8 stood with his hands on his hips, aware that the dancers were still finding their way through his system of ancestral and contemporary movements, called the Talawa Technique.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, dance doyenne Robinson stood nearby, smiling as she walked along the wall panning with her iPhone camera and documenting the open rehearsal of \u201cCatch Ah Fire.\u201d<\/p>\n
As her dancers rehearsed beside Prest\u00f8\u2019s dance instructors, a faint sheen of perspiration began to glisten on their chests, arms, and foreheads. They stomped, leaped and held poses. Things were getting strenuous. The audience was warming up, too, offering whoops and yelps. So, this is what creative collaboration can look like among the descendants of the African diaspora. For Prest\u00f8, a magician of movement and memory, the Black body is itself an archive of the ancestral as well as a transporter of contemporary ideas about liberation. Of course, Robinson, a creative force as well as a community builder, would offer the younger choreographer a stage. And, in doing so, she offers Denver a glimpse at a broader, richer world.<\/p>\n
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This weekend, Robinson\u2019s \u201cFirebird\u201d and Prest\u00f8\u2019s \u201cCatch Ah Fire\u201d arrive at the Ellie Caulkins Opera House as part of Cleo Parker Robinson Dance\u2019s fall show.<\/p>\n
Her piece is set to Igor Stravinsky\u2019s ballet symphony of the same name. It leans, however, into a folklore tradition different than the Slavic lore of the European classic: that of Hawaii. Prest\u00f8\u2019s piece \u2014 scored with Marley\u2019s socially reckoning ballad \u201cWar\u201d but also songs from German singer Ayo and Jamaican singer Etana \u2014 nods to notions of resistance and resilience.<\/p>\n
That the Norwegian choreographer was in Denver working with Robinson\u2019s dancers serves as a reminder of Robinson\u2019s stature as a global dance world figure. As if we needed the nudge: In late March, Robinson was among the five co-founders of the International Association of Blacks in Dance awarded the National Medal of Arts at a White House ceremony.<\/p>\n
It was at an IABD conference that Prest\u00f8 and Robinson first met a few years back. \u201cWe kept bouncing into each other, ended up in the elevator together so many times that it became a joke,\u201d said Prest\u00f8. \u201cOur spirits really connected and gelled. Then we were teaching classes near each other, almost overlapping. We ended up peeking into each other’s classes. I think both kind of fell in love with the spirit.\u201d<\/p>\n
It was 2019 and the two talked about collaborating then, but life \u2014 and sorrow \u2014 intervened. First, there was the pandemic and its upending effects on the performing arts. COVID forced the company to celebrate its 50th anniversary in 2020 virtually. Then in spring of 2022, Robinson\u2019s husband, Tom, a co-founder of the company and himself an outsized, beloved figure in Denver, died.<\/p>\n
In early summer, Robinson and Malik Robinson, Cleo Parker Robinson Dance\u2019s executive director and Cleo Parker Robinson\u2019s son, called Prest\u00f8 from Hawaii and said, \u201cLet\u2019s see if we can do this.\u201d<\/p>\n
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\u201cLet\u2019s see if we can do this\u201d may not be succinct enough to become a motto, but it nails Robinson\u2019s ethos. Sure, her name graces her dance company, but she likes working with others. The word \u201cCompany\u201d is an invitation; it means something more communal than martial or commercial.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don’t know what it is to do anything alone,\u201d she said sitting in her office. \u201cI don’t know what that is. But I do think \u2014 growing up in the Civil Rights Movement, growing up during Jim Crow laws \u2014 that unity is an underlining necessity for my survival. I know that what I’m creating is an opportunity for people to sort of commune in the highest way.\u201d<\/p>\n
It was her work with the Colorado Symphony Orchestra conductor Marin Alsop that led Robinson to take on \u201cFirebird.\u201d \u201cShe loved working with me,\u201d recounted Robinson. \u201cShe was just becoming a really famous conductor, and she would always say, \u2018Cleo, what about this? What about \u2018Aida\u2019? What about that?\u2019 Once she said, \u2018Why don\u2019t we do \u201cFirebird?\u201d’” Robinson admitted that initially, she was not especially interested in \u201cFirebird. \u201cBut,\u201d she told Alsop, \u201cI am interested in Pele. I am interested in the fire goddess.\u201d<\/p>\n
At the time, Robinson had already had a long relationship with Hawaii. Some of it was complicated: Her mother\u2019s father was a developer on Oahu. But she also traveled there with her husband Tom Robinson, who officiated several Aloha Bowls. But the professional tipping point came when she began going to the Big Island on behalf of the National Endowment for the Arts to evaluate arts organizations. That work led to her bringing her dance company to Hawaii.<\/p>\n
Robinson leaned into the lore and life of the Hawaiian Islands as well as the story of Pele the goddess of the volcanic. Her re-imagining of Stravinsky\u2019s \u201cFirebird\u201d had its world premiere with the symphony under Alsop\u2019s direction in 1997.<\/p>\n
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On a recent afternoon, Norwegian choreographer Prest\u00f8 was talking about his collaboration with Robinson as he walked through Oslo\u2019s multicultural district where he lives. He was on his way to the city\u2019s Intercultural Museum where his company has been holding rehearsals since the pandemic.<\/p>\n
As he entered the sleek but warm, modern museum space, talk turned to the Talawa Technique, his codification of African- and Caribbean-inflected movements, and what it was like teaching Robinson\u2019s dancers the choreography for \u201cCatch Ah Fire.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThey took quite quickly to the bent knees, the difference in posture, the active centers,” he said. \u201cThere’s so much synergy between the Caribbean and the American,\u201d he continued. \u201cThey also felt it was hard. It\u2019s a very muscled way of dancing. It takes strong muscles, and it also takes strategic relaxation. So, this understanding [of] when do you use power? when do you relax? and alternating between those to create this kind of pulse and this power with ease,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cVery often as black dancers, we are asked to compartmentalize ourselves. I wasn\u2019t asking the dancers to negate any part of themselves. I was simply asking them to turn up the volume. And for a lot of them, that seemed to be quite big,\u201d Prest\u00f8 said. \u201cI think they didn’t believe me in the beginning and then seeing my dancers and how they moved and how I moved and that it was so similar yet so different \u2014 because each one is turning up the volume on their own self.\u201d<\/p>\n
Robinson could have simply invited Prest\u00f8 and his dance company over as guests. \u201cBut it was also about the blending of the companies, allowing the African American dancers she has to engage and interact with the Afro Norwegians and Afro Scandinavians. To see that similarity and difference,\u201d said Prest\u00f8, whose company is one of two Black dance ensembles in Northern Europe.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s about extending the village.\u201d<\/p>\n