ARTbreak: The Dance of Social Justice

Helanius Wilkins has devoted himself to using the lenses of Black masculinity and cutting-edge choreography to rethink race, class, identity, human diversity and tragic turns of inhumanity…”— Clarence E. Page, Pulitzer Prize Journalist, Chicago Tribune.

Helanius Wilkins, an award-winning choreographer, performance artist, innovator, and educator based in Boulder, Colorado, will present a lecture-demonstration titled “The Dance of Social Justice.” Wilkins is the 2020-2022 selected recipient of Wellspring/Cori Terry & Dancers’ Midwest Regional Alternative Dance Festival’s (RAD Fest) RADicle residency award in partnership with The Croft of Horton Bay, MI. RADicle residency artists are awarded a two-week residency at the Croft where they create a work in the fall which premieres at RAD Fest in March.

“The Dance of Social Justice” is a lecture-demonstration which Wilkins has designed to be an introduction to his background and his journey of art and social justice practices leading to his RADicle project, “The Conversation Series: Stitching the Geopolitical Quilt to Re-Body Belonging.” “The Conversation Series” culminates in a multi-media performance and is tailor-made to each and every community it is performed in. The Kalamazoo iteration will be presented at the Epic Center on March 4. Two weeks before the performance, Wilkins will bring together an intimate multi-cultural intergenerational grouping from the Kalamazoo community to illuminate the interstitial tissue that connects us through shared stories, workshops, and local area historical cultural research. Wilkins will use this research to tailor-make the performance. This project will be completed in each of the 50 U.S. states with a documentary made of this process.