Dance professor’s work to ‘heal and unite’ earns NEA grant

By Clint Talbott

Helanius J. Wilkins, assistant professor of dance, was awarded a National Endowment for the Arts grant for a choreographed duet intended to “heal and unite” and to reflect “re-bodying belonging to become better ancestors.”

With the NEA’s support—and with additional funding and support from the College of Arts and Sciences—Wilkins and the CU Boulder dance division will collaborate with several touring, commissioning presenter-partners.

The work is called The Conversation Series: Stitching the Geopolitical Quilt to Re-Body Belonging and is described as a multi-year, multi-outcome work that is “an ongoing and always shifting dance-quilt, confronting and celebrating heritage, resiliency, justice and hope.”

Wilkins said his creative research is rooted in the interconnections of American contemporary performance, cultural history and identities of Black men.

Photo by Christopher Michael Carruth