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WEEK OF AUGUST 10, 2023
VOLUME 96 | ISSUE 38
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Collaborating for a cultural dance experience SROs reinstated at Denver schools didn’t increase tickets and arrests BY MELANIE ASMAR CHALKBEAT COLORADO
felt like I wanted to be in the world. Growing up there was destiny.” Parker Robinson has certainly made her mark on the world, particularly through her founding of Cleo Parker Robinson Dance (CPRD). Based in Denver, it is one of the world’s most well-known, reputable dance companies. With her company, she aims to honor the African Diaspora, explore the human condition, champion social justice, unite people of all ages and races, and ultimately celebrate the complexity of life through movement. As part of her mission, CPRD each
Tickets and arrests of students at 13 Denver Public Schools campuses were lower when police officers were not stationed inside the school buildings than when they were, according to state and local data from the 2019-20 and 2022-23 school years. The data backs a key criticism of school resource officers, which is that they increase tickets and arrests and feed the school-to-prison pipeline. But when SROs were reintroduced on those 13 campuses for the last two months of the 2022-23 school year, after a shooting inside East High School, the monthly average of tickets and arrests did not go up, according to data from the Denver Police Department. East High student Stella Kaye has a theory as to why. When Kaye, a 16-year-old junior, thought about the data on SROs, “I thought about, Wow, they probably know how many people don’t want them to be there,” she said. “So if they start arresting kids left and right, it would not look good for the police or DPS. It’s almost like they had to be on their best behavior. It’s like they were put in
SEE COLLABORATING, P2
SEE SROS, P4
Thomas Prestø of Norway instructs dancers with the Cleo Parker Robinson Dance Ensemble on his choreography for his “Catch of PHOTO BY CHRISTY STEADMAN Fire,” which will be performed alongside the September production of “Firebird.”
musicians during segregaCleo Parker Robinson Dance Black tion. Parker Robinson lived in an at the hotel, above a jazz partners with Scandinavian apartment lounge that hosted legendary Black like Duke Ellington and choreographer for September musicians Billie Holiday. She would go to sleep every night hearing music being performance performed by artists from around BY CHANCY J. GATLIN-ANDERSON SPECIAL TO COLORADO COMMUNITY MEDIA
Cleo Parker Robinson grew up in the historic Rossonian Hotel in Denver’s Five Points neighborhood. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1995, the Rossonian Hotel catered to touring
the country and the globe, taking in their energy and dreaming about how she would one day make her mark on the world. “As a child, it felt worldly to me. I was always hearing classical music, jazz music and music from all over the world,” Parker Robinson said. “It just made me want to bring the world together all the time. I always
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