Ucross Artist Invites Community to Participate in National Project

Dance Studio (Ucross Photo)

On August 1 and 2nd, Ucross artist-in-residence Helanius J. Wilkins, an award-winning choreographer, performance artist, activist and educator based in Boulder, Colorado, invites local community members to participate in “The Conversation Series: Stitching the Geopolitical Quilt to Re-Body Belonging,” a project that includes new choreographies, a documentary film and a digital archive of the process and performance.

“The work stitches together a ‘dance-quilt’ to broaden our understandings of what it means to be American and sew ourselves together anew,” explained Wilkins. “It is humbling and also an honor to have Ucross as an organizational partner to create one of my landing places in the state of Wyoming.”

The first part, “Belonging Conversation Community Gathering” will be at the WYO Performing Arts and Education Center on Tuesday, August 1, at 6:30 p.m. Designed to bring together an intergenerational and inclusive group of Sheridan County residents, this community gathering creates a space to explore the topic of belonging from multiple entry points and perspectives and to illuminate how we are connected through shared stories.

On Wednesday, August 2, at 5:30 p.m., Wilkins will give an artist talk at Ucross, in the Lauren Anderson Dance Studio. He will discuss the dance of social justice, share insights about “The Conversation Series” and answer questions. Light refreshments will be served.

Over several years, Wilkins will travel to all 50 states, Washington, DC., and five inhabited territories to discover the histories and stories of diverse communities and engage in conversations centering on belonging. He is guided by the question: “How can we get the world that we deserve —one that works for everyone?”

Presented and supported in part by Ucross, Wilkins will facilitate a series of these gatherings in Sheridan County. He will begin by meeting privately with different groups, then engage the greater community with two public events.

Both events are free and open to the public, with required registration available at ucross.org.

In September, Wilkins will return to Ucross to follow-up on the community conversations. The visit will culminate in a site-based choreographic ritual presentation at Ucross on September 9. Open to the public, this finale will be a response that is part meditation, part dance and part performance art to everything the community shared with him.

For more information, visit ucross.org.

Helanius J. Wilkins is an award-winning choreographer, performance artist, artivist (artist-activist) and educator who engages artmaking to forge paths towards social change and equitable landscapes.

Wilkins enjoys creating, presenting, and receiving commissions for choreography throughout the United States and abroad. He has choreographed and directed over 60 works, including two critically-acclaimed musical productions for Washington, DC’s Studio Theater – “Passing Strange” (2010) and “POP!” (2011). He founded and artistically directed EDGEWORKS Dance Theater in Washington DC, a dance company predominantly of Black men that existed for 13 years. EDGWORKS was the primary repository for his choreography from 2001–2014.

Currently performing his own choreography exclusively, Wilkins engages in a ritual: ritual as an experience of uncertainty that penetrates states of fatigue and exhaustion. At the core of his work are personal, lived experiences. Past performance experiences included the works of nationally recognized choreographers such as Robert Moses and Kevin Wynn and performing with Maida Withers’ Dance Construction Company (DC) and as a guest with the Liz Lerman Dance Exchange (MD).

Foundations and organizations including New England Foundation for the Arts (National Dance Project), National Performance Network, Colorado Creative Industries, the D.C. Commission on the Arts & Humanities, and the National Endowment for the Arts have supported his work. His honors include the 2008 Pola Nirenska Award for Contemporary Achievement in Dance, and the 2002 and 2006 Kennedy Center Local Dance Commissioning Project Award. Bates Dance Festival named him their 2002 Emerging Choreographer.

Service is integral to his work. Wilkins commits to service because it is his way of dreaming and actively doing. He is a member of the National Board of Directors of the American College Dance Association for the Northwest region and serves on boards and advisory committees for Colorado state and nonprofit organizations. He was appointed in 2018 by Governor Jared Polis to the Colorado Council on Creative Industries and completed a 4-year term.

Wilkins is currently Associate Chair and Director of Dance and a Professor in the Department of Theatre and Dance at the University of Colorado Boulder. His 25+ years career in the academy included various positions from guest artist in residence to visiting professor. Core to his work is providing a multilingual and multisensory approach to movement that deepens awareness, and that prepares students for the demands of an ever-changing field.

The Ucross Foundation is located in northeast Wyoming in the foothills of the Bighorn Mountains, Ucross fosters the creative spirit of deeply committed artists and groups by providing uninterrupted time, studio space, living accommodations, and the experience of the majestic High Plains, while serving as a responsible steward of its 20,000-acre ranch. Residencies are awarded to around 115 artists each year. Ten artists are in residence at one time, typically a mix of visual artists, writers, composers, and choreographers.

Since the residency program began in 1983, Ucross has supported more than 2,600 artists, including such distinguished fellows as Annie Proulx, Terry Tempest Williams, Elizabeth Gilbert, Ann Patchett, Ricky Ian Gordon, Bill Morrison, Theaster Gates, Anthony Hernandez, and Tayari Jones. National Book Award winners Susan Choi, Sigrid Nunez, and Sarah M. Broom have been residents, as have Academy Award and Tony winners Benj Pasek and Justin Paul, Emmy Award winner Billy Porter, recent Pulitzer Prize winners Michael R. Jackson and Colson Whitehead, and three-term United States Poet Laureate Joy Harjo.

Ucross participates in more than a dozen creative partnerships with national organizations that enhance its ability to support outstanding individual artists with residencies. National partners include the Sundance Institute, the PEN/Hemingway Award for Debut Fiction, the Whiting Foundation, the Ford Family Foundation, the Herb Alpert Award in the Arts, the Alley Theatre, UCLA’s Center for the Art of Performance, Yale University, the Shepherd School of Music at Rice University, Cave Canem, the Houston Ballet and the Berklee Institute of Jazz and Gender Justice.

For more information contact Ucross Director of External Relations
Caitlin Addlesperger | caddlesperger@ucross.org | 307.752.7091