What’s in a Title? For Choreographer Helanius J. Wilkins Everything and Then Some

It’s a mouthful. The title of Helanius Wilkins’ latest dance work and ongoing project, “The Conversation Series: Stitching the Geopolitical Quilt to Re-Body Belonging” is chewy, to be sure. “It’s a jarring title,” the choreographer, CU Boulder faculty member and social-justice “artivist” warmly concedes. “And that is part of the point.”

When discussing his multi-dimensional, years-long undertaking (a portion of which premieres September at the Roe Green Theatre), Wilkins always states the entire heading. Consider it “an invitation to patience, to slowing down, to considering a response rather than being reactionary,” he says. And, like the social-justice values that infuse his thinking, choreography and teaching, it’s not intended to be “slick. It doesn’t roll off the tongue.” The process—and the tender and durable insights that feed his dances—“doesn’t happen magically. It requires reorienting to time.”

For his ambitious project, Wilkins has been in the process of visiting each state in the U.S. as well as the five territories, employing “a system of care and repair” in gatherings with local community members. They convene and—depending on their own comfort zone or wish to soften that border between self and neighbor— listen, talk, move. In short, participants begin stitching their disparate stories, often sharing what the “belonging” means to them in a room with others taking a similar leap of faith. 

Wilkins has visited 10 states so far. In a bit of touching lyricism, early on he visited Lafayette, Louisiana, the town of his birth. The upcoming CU Presents show will also reflect time Wilkins, an associate professor at the university, spent in another town named Lafayette while building the Colorado dance. It will also sew other lessons he’s gleaned in his sojourn. 

Wilkins continues to spend time in the Boulder County town on the eastern boundary. “It has been one that has made a forever impression on me,” he says. 

It was in Lafayette, during one of several “belonging conversations” that something surprising, yet dreamed of, occurred. “We arrived at a conversation where a community member was able to have the courage, the bravery to confront another community member about an act that they had perceived as a racist act against them.”

The person these comments were directed toward listened, paused, and… apologized. “You could hear a pin drop,” Wilkins says. “We were about 25 people in the room. Tears rolled down because we understood that was just the beginning of healing in the greater community.” 

It seemed to confirm the practices, theoretical and embodied, that Wilkins has leaned into in creating “The Conversation Series: Stitching the Geopolitical Quilt to Re-Body Belonging.” “Did I create a world that allowed for space for us to dream and imagine different futures, and for us to see ourselves in relationship differently to one another?” Wilkins asked. It was a question posed with hope and humility, from a deeply searching artist set on being just as profoundly human.

CU Dance presents “The Conversation Series: Stitching the Geopolitical Quilt to Re-Body Belonging” in the Roe Green Theatre from Sept. 12 through 14, 2024.