Artist Profile: Chell Parkins

Chell Parkins is the inaugural Arnhold director of dance education at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she writes, implements, and directs dance education curricula while developing programs with community partners to advocate for the re-emergence of dance education in Wisconsin. She is a dance advocate, choreographer, educator, performer, and scholar whose research explores the experiences of Latinx communities engaged in culturally responsive-sustaining dance programs. Parkins’ documentary WanderlustDance: Puerto Rico invites audiences to look at the culture, politics, and people of post-Maria Puerto Rico through interviews set against footage of solo dance performances at picturesque and historical sites across the archipelago.

1) Could you share how landscape and environment become collaborators for you?

During my first residency in the Basque region of Spain, I was alone, and the landscape was my only partner for two weeks. The residency took place at two espacios de creación (artist spaces). The first was in a remote mountain village, and the second was at Bilbao's industrial peninsula. The spaces were drastically different, so I experienced them differently. In the mountains, I danced on rounded clay tile roofs, but in Bilbao, it was a dusty abandoned paper-making warehouse. I began thinking about the significance and meaning of these sites. Who had inhabited them, what activities happened there, who built them, and for what purpose? My favorite site was these piles of giant rusty chains that once docked boats on the harbor. They stacked more than 6 feet high and slipped when I moved on them. My body turned red with their rust. In describing it, I can feel the different textures and how they impacted my movement. Later, the sites I danced on in Puerto Rico were rich with history, my ancestral history. It was impossible not to connect the history of colonization and the textures of the landscape and architecture with my embodied experiences.

2) How do teaching and community-engaged work inform your own creative processes and practices?

My approach is similar across these spaces and deeply influenced by my experiences with ethnography and the pedagogy of the oppressed. I see communities where I work, my students, and myself as collaborators and equals. We each have valuable prior knowledge. I strive to learn as much as possible while remaining humble, then share the parts of my experience that connect or might serve. I believe we each have something to share and teach one another. If I approach communities, individuals, myself, research, and the creative process with curiosity, I allow a space for inspiration, hope, critical thinking, and change to happen.

3) Would you be willing to share one of your first memories of dancing?

I fell in love with dance when I was really young and started taking classes when I was 6. I didn't really find my dancing path until college, though, when I began studying modern, post-modern, and contact improvisation. I was going through a tough time, and dance saved my life. I think a lot of dancers feel that way. I had several traumatic experiences that I was working through, and dance was a place where I felt empowered and beautiful. I was able to process some of my life experiences in abstract ways that were healing for me. I also learned I could make a statement with my choreography. I wanted to impact the audience, whether it was through having empathetic experiences or making social justice commentary. My hope is to share this healing relationship with dance with others, especially individuals and communities working through crisis and trauma.

4) What are 2 to 3 exhibitions, concerts, books and/or book talks, spoken word events and/or films you're hoping to check out this season (through June or so) in Wisconsin or virtually?

I am an avid reader. Recently, a colleague asked for book recommendations on Facebook. I wrote down at least 20 book titles. I buy whichever ones from that list that I can find without looking at the descriptions every time I visit a used bookstore. Right now, I’m reading The Overstory by Richard Powers. I would have given anything to see Ballet Hispánico in Chicago recently. They're my favorite dance company right now. I also might see the Pixies this summer. My goal is to start seeing more local music and dance though. I'll definitely hit the Shifting Bike Gears Bike Path festival again in September.