Denver’s Five Points neighborhood stands as a cultural landmark — a place where Black ancestors sowed dreams along redlined streets as jazz horns pierced segregation’s veil and civil rights chants channeled a cultural heartbeat.
As Five Points grapples with gentrification and fading jazz-era legacies, the expansion of Cleo Parker Robinson Dance (CPRD) Center For The Healing Arts transforms a KKK-scarred church into a $25 million hub for healing arts, ensuring Black dance endures for generations amid urban change.
Born in resistance, Cleo Parker Robinson Dance, located at the intersection of Park Avenue West, East 20th Avenue, and Washington Street, has blossomed into a vibrant force, memorializing Five Points’ layered generational heritage through every dancer’s step and sway. Anchored by the storied Shorter Community African Methodist Episcopal Church, the 25,000-square-foot expansion will fuse the 100-year-old landmark with four-stories of state-of-the-art rehearsal and dance studios, including a 28-foot-high Studio A, an underground Flex Space theater, community gathering spaces, and a solar-paneled atrium.
The glass-paneled addition contrasts sharply with Shorter AME’s historic blond brick, fusing the local landmark with contemporary architecture to more than double the facility.
Kayhun Lee served as project architect for Fentress Studios (a Populous Company) on the building’s design team. Fentress designed the Denver International Airport, Colorado Convention Center, Denver Art Museum’s latest update, and Pentagon Memorial’s Visitor Education Center honoring 9/11 victims.
The expansion was constructed by Mortenson, a company with 12 offices nationwide including a Denver location.
“These walls have seen Hattie McDaniel and Madame C.J. Walker, the light and beauty of a strong community,” said Cleo Parker Robinson, founder and artistic director of the organization bearing her name. “I am deeply honored that this extension — and its new walls — etch my choreography and timeless story into them.”
CPRD’s expansion houses its five pillars: four dance ensembles, Arts-in-Education, Arts-in-Wellness, facility rentals, and the CPRD Academy. Robinson views The Center for the Healing Arts as a vessel for healing, memory, and cultural rebirth — one that honors the institution’s roots while propelling its mission of ‘Together we are building a legacy that will inspire for decades to come.’
Cleo, a Denver dance pioneer who founded CPRD in the 1970s, envisioned this rebirth —infusing her modern and African dance legacy into every curve. The new wing’s bold lines echo her choreography, fusing African diaspora roots with universal movement. Icon and friend, Katherine Dunham pioneered dance anthropology, decoding how dances embed power structures, gender roles, and communal values — reading movement as cultural text, not isolated performance.
While some walls talk, these dance. A labanotation transcription of Cleo’s masterwork in ‘Spiritual Suite’—a core work from “Mary Don’t You Weep” that she choreographed for the first national MLK Day in 1986—pulses alive, etched on the east-facing solar panels that generate power.
Labanotation employs abstract symbols to specify movement direction and level, the body part involved, its duration, and dynamic quality. These urban hieroglyphs weave choreography into sustainable architecture, preserving dance history.
Above the labanotation panels, floor-to-ceiling vertical panes of glass flood the main Marcelline Freeman Studio with light and color. This space honors the memory of Freeman, a principal dancer and rehearsal director with CPRD for more than 35 years.
A Grand Celebration of Healing
The new building’s grand opening with ribbon cutting is January 17, 2026, during the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday weekend, scheduled fittingly 40 years after the debut of Robinson’s iconic choreography honoring the civil rights leader. “Healing cannot advance without freedom,” Cleo said. “And freedom is what this space truly represents.”
The spaces are designed to draw an estimated 12,000 theatergoers and 2,500 students annually, breathing new life into Five Points year-round, according to CPRD’s news release. These figures underscore the expansion’s role as a bustling cultural engine, sustaining programs amid neighborhood change.
Along with the opening ceremony, a four-day festival will premier films, showcase emerging talent, honor elders, and host the inaugural performance of ‘Raise the Roof’ featuring the CPRD ensemble, Lil Buck, Philidaanco, and others.
The celebration will celebrate the power of partnerships, in particular Black philanthropy. Black households donate a higher percentage of their income to charity than white households—25% more annually—with nearly two-thirds giving about $11 billion yearly, often through churches, family traditions, and community networks, according to a report by Giving Gap (2024) .
“The community—and organizations like Black Resilience in Colorado (BRIC) and AYA—really came through for the expansion,” said Malik Robinson, son of founder Cleo who serves as CPRD’s president and CEO. “There’s a real story here about Black philanthropy in Colorado.”
Groups like BRIC and AYA are community-focused organizations dedicated to supporting Black entrepreneurs and professionals.
The expansion smashed past its $11 million goal through grants, New Markets Tax Credits, donors, and community drives. About 10% came from Black donors—in a city where the population is 8.8% Black.
“It’s a powerful reminder of the arts’ remarkable power to shatter barriers, foster understanding, and reveal our shared humanity,” he said.
Malik has more than a decade of experience shaping CPRD, and contributing to the international dance community, including his role as board treasurer for the International Association of Blacks in Dance.
CPRD launched two giving societies to honor major donors fueling the $25 million expansion: Sankofa Society for $50,000 to $99,000 gifts and Aya Society for $100,000 gifts. Words derived from Akan symbols originating from West Africa, “Sankofa” means go back and get it, while “aya” signifies endurance and resilience.
Faith and spirituality fueled the fundraising campaign. Malik speaks often with grandfathers and icons like Dunham who are in the spirit realms. “Dancers gone on have had a hand—spiritual, metaphysical, in-the-flesh. I hear Dad cheering, ‘Go ‘head, Mo!’—my childhood nickname,” he said with a warm smile.
When the weight of legacy presses, Cleo slips to the park, where she finds peace watching geese glide, hiding furious, synchronized paddling beneath, much like dancers’ grace covering up sweat and strain. And when the geese take flight, slicing skies in a perfect formation? It’s natural choreography: purpose, partnership, and unity pulsing through every wingbeat.
“They show us that it doesn’t take away your wings to fly together,” Cleo explained.
The Intersection of Social Justice and Performing Arts
Gentrification has recast Denver’s historic Five Points, slashing its Black population from over 90% of the neighborhood’s total in 1930 to just 12.76% by 2016. Luxury condos, soaring rents, displacement, and cultural erosion have driven these changes, according to the Urban Displacement Project—a research initiative using community-centered data to promote equitable urban futures.
As jazz landmarks like the Rossonian — once hosting entertainment legends like Duke Ellington and Ella Fitzgerald — languish vacant or face redevelopment pressures, CPRD’s success in preserving the area’s Black heritage is significant. The organization’s expansion anchors artist rentals and promises to revive Five Points’ soul—Harlem of the West
According to the 2020 U.S. Census, the area is home to approximately 22,000 people – 61% are white, ages 25 to 34, living in residences ranging from the mid-$300,000s to $1.3 million.
The updated CPRD Theatre and studios will open for rentals in January 2026, fueling community arts, rehearsals, and events and sustaining the neighborhood’s heartbeat. The goal is to earn from diverse revenue streams that support the artistic and educational development as well as health and wellness of the community.
CPRD preserves a lasting legacy — training leaders and uniting diverse communities. It provides a community anchor, Black artistry archive, and launchpad for future stars, where alumni like Gary Abbott, Lisa Johnson-Willingham, and Karah Abiog sharpened their skills. CPRD also revives vanishing Black cultural treasures like Chuck Davis and Talley Beatty, whose works fade from national stages. Its repertoire boasts more Donald McKayle pieces than any U.S. company, while keeping Dunham’s masterpieces alive through ongoing Dunham Technique training.
“Cleo Parker Robinson Dance is at the intersection of social justice and the performing arts,” said attorney Skip Netzorg. He was one of the many community leaders who helped raise funds for the facility.
Judith Lawrence, 62, a certified mortgage advisor at MoneyMax Mortgage Inc. who trained at CPRD for a decade, credits the program with building her continued confidence.
When Lawrence worried her body was “too big” to dance, Cleo showed her photos of troupe members with similar builds: “Look at them. Their bodies look like yours—and they dance.” That moment shattered body shaming and shaped Lawrence’s career, blending arts passion with technical precision.
“Dance taught me to believe in myself… especially when encouragement didn’t always come easily,” she said. “Dance also helped me develop the courage to try things that felt hard or intimidating.
Institutions like CPRD let “little girls like me… dream—and believe that anything is possible,” said the Denver native, noting her Shorter AME ties from ages 7 to 18 reinforced community roots. The expansion means “access, opportunity, and visibility” for Black dancers, she said. “My mom always told me I could do anything, and seeing Black dancers on stage reinforced that message.”
The milestone of the opening in January celebrates the ancestors whose stories are etched into Five Points’ cracked sidewalks—a testament that Black legacy keeps dancing, alive and triumphant.
When Cleo glances up at geese slicing overhead in a perfect V-formation, it hits her: no one soars that high alone. Each wingbeat lifts the one behind, just like the community now gathering inside, rising together in their own joyful migration.
Her dream takes shape through living choreography: a monumental expansion carrying Black dance forward on wings powered by sheer grit, shared strength, and ancestral power that nothing can shatter.
INFO PULL OUT:
Cleo Parker Robinson Dance marks the new facility’s debut amid Denver’s Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. celebrations with these public events:
Friday, Jan. 16: Film Festival in the new CPRD Theatre.
Saturday, Jan. 17: Ribbon-cutting and tours, 10 a.m.–1 p.m.; inaugural dance performance of Raise the Roof at 7:30 p.m.
Sunday, Jan. 18: Community church service in the historic Shorter A.M.E. Church space.
Monday, Jan. 19: Joins Denver’s MLK Marade.
Friday, Jan. 23: Arts-in-Education student movement session.
Saturday, Jan. 24: CPRD Academy Open House with free dance classes.
Editor’s note: For more information, visit cleoparkerdance.org or Cleo Parker Robinson Dance on social media: Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn.
