Choreographic Ritual with Helanius J. Wilkins

Join NCCAkron and choreographer Helanius J. Wilkins for a Choreographic Ritual – a free, site-based performance offering inspired by the Akron, OH community.

This is the culminating event for a series of community-engagement activities collectively called Systems for Care and Repair. Each activity is connected to The Conversation Series: Stitching the Geopolitical Quilt to Re-Body Belonging, an ongoing and always shifting dance and social change work, confronting and celebrating heritage, resiliency, justice, and hope. Created by artist-activist Helanius J. Wilkins (Boulder, CO), it is a multi-year, multi-outcome work that will travel to all 50 U.S. states, Washington DC, and 5 inhabited territories, stitching together a dance-quilt to broaden our understanding of what it means to be American and sew ourselves together anew.

NCCAkron is hosting Wilkins in a Creative Residency the week of May 13 – 18, 2024, which marks the return of his process in Ohio state. He was previously on the ground in March 2022 for a series of community walking tours of Akron and again in September of 2023 for the first Belonging Conversation Community Gathering hosted by Summit ArtSpace. There will be an additional Belonging Conversation at the North Hill Branch Library on Monday, May 13, at 5pm. If you would like to share in that conversation, RSVP here.

***Please be advised this event will be video-documented for archival purposes and to support the creation of multiple media outcomes for The Conversation Series: Stitching the Geopolitical Quilt to Re-Body Belonging.

About the Artist

Louisiana native and Colorado transplant Helanius J. Wilkins is an award-winning choreographer, performance artist, educator, certified Colorado Change Leader, and artivist (artist-activist). Wilkins's creative research and projects are rooted in the interconnections of American contemporary performance, cultural history, and identities of Black men. His projects examine the raced dancing body and ways ritual can access knowledge. He uses remembering to piece together and liberate Black identity through performance. Having choreographed 60+ works, honors include the Pola Nirenska Award for Contemporary Achievement in Dance (DC’s highest honor, given by the Washington Performing Arts Society, 2008) and the Kennedy Center Local Dance Commissioning Project (2002 & 2006). Foundations/organizations including NEA, NEFA National Dance Project, and National Performance Network (NPN) have supported his work. He founded and artistically directed D.C.-based EDGEWORKS Dance Theater, an all-male dance company predominantly of Black men that toured nationally and internationally (2001 - 2014). He is the Associate Chair and Director and an Associate Professor of Dance at CU Boulder. He is a member of the National Board of Directors of the American College Dance Association (ACDA) for the Northwest region and completed a 4-year term to the Colorado Council on Creative Industries as appointed by Governor Jared Polis in 2018. His current work is a multi-year, multi-outcome art and humanities work titled The Conversation Series: Stitching the Geopolitical Quilt to Re-Body Belonging. www.helaniusj.com

Funding Credits

This Creative Residency and the development of The Conversation Series: Stitching the Geopolitical Quilt to Re-Body Belonging were made possible in part by the National Center for Choreography at The University of Akron (NCCAkron) and funding from the National

Endowment for the Arts.

The Conversation Series: Stitching the Geopolitical Quilt to Re-Body Belonging is a National Performance Network (NPN) Creation & Development Fund Project co-commissioned by Redline Contemporary Art Center in partnership with CSPS Legion Arts, Dance Place, The Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center and NPN/VAN. The Creation & Development Fund is supported by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts (a federal agency). For more information, visit www.npnweb.org.

Photo Credit: David Dowling