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WEEK OF FEBRUARY 15, 2024
VOLUME 97 | ISSUE 11
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Beguiling audiences with storytelling Proposal
could overhaul Colorado school funding Changes could boost English learning programs, rural districts
BY JASON GONZALES CHALKBEAT COLORADO
Garrett Ammon and Dawn Fay, who live in Adams County, the 12-member troupe is Denver’s second largest dance company. As former principals with Ballet Memphis, both Ammon and Fay are accomplished dancers in their own right. Both are retired from the stage but if anything, their explosive creativity has only increased – enlivening the local arts scene with full-length, original story ballets, often in collaboration with local musicians, visual artists, poets and even a local magician. In a way, their collaborative approach evokes the birth of contemporary ballet in turn-of-the-century Paris, when impresario Sergei Diaghilev gathered dancers, composers, artists and writers together to form the legendary Ballets Russes.
A proposed overhaul of Colorado’s school funding formula is being hailed as long overdue, though lawmakers are wondering how they’ll pay for it and some education advocates say it’s only a partial answer to decades of underfunding. Under the proposal, Colorado schools would get more money to meet the needs of English learners and students with disabilities, and rural districts would get more funding to address their challenges. If adopted, it would be the first major change in 30 years to how Colorado divvies up funding to schools. The proposal, released this week, is the work of a 17-member task force that managed to reach agreement on thorny issues that have tanked previous efforts to reform the current formula, which is widely viewed as outof-date and unfair. “With the formula change, the state can really target those resources to the kids who need the most,” said task force member Brenda Dickhoner, CEO of the conservative education advocacy group Ready Colorado. “We are really moving away from a one-size-fits-all educational model to a really individualized model that takes place in a variety of different types of educational settings. And I think that is what’s going to close our achievement gaps.”
SEE STORY TELLING, P6
SEE FUNDING, P4
Dancers Nathan Mariano and Danielle Lieberman rehearse for Wonderbound’s upcoming show, “Awakening Beauty,” in the company’s newly-renovated quarters in northern Park Hill in Denver. Appropriately enough, the dancers now take flight in a space PHOTO BY TIM COLLINS that was once an airplane hanger.
Denver’s Wonderbound reimagines ‘Sleeping Beauty’ with a forceful princess, live music BY KIRSTEN DAHL COLLINS SPECIAL TO COLORADO COMMUNITY MEDIA
At Wonderbound ballet’s performance of “Wicked Bayou” this past fall, a zombie band played funky rock-and-roll onstage, while two children lost in the bayou tried to evade a snapping, 20-foot-long alligator. There were no tutus or pointe shoes in sight. That’s nothing unusual at Wonderbound. The Denver dance company — which was honored with the 2013
Denver Mayor’s Award for Excellence in Arts & Culture — is nudging ballet into the 21st century with dramatic storytelling, live rock and pop artists, and powerful ballerinas who sometimes lift their male partners instead of vice versa. After relocating 10 times in 10 years, Wonderbound recently settled into permanent headquarters: a cleverly renovated 1920’s airplane hangar in Denver’s Northeast Park Hill neighborhood. New features include retractable seating, which allows the troupe to transform its enormous theater into two spacious practice studios. In the company’s new, onsite scene shop, production manager Eleanor Moriarty can hammer and saw to her heart’s content — since a six-inch thick freezer door blocks all noise from the stage. Led by husband-and-wife team
VOICES: 10 | LIFE: 12 | CALENDAR: 15
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EMPOWERMENT IN INK Tattoo shops bringing art to life P12