Pay no mind to the idea that artists must quake and fret on stage to truly feel their art: Damien Patterson’s best moments have arrived with all eyes upon him, and when he’s had the most to lose.
“I felt like my own version of Beyoncé being in (‘Divisions’), which is the collaboration we first did with Flobots in 2017, “ said Patterson, who is retiring from a 24-year dance career after he finishes out Wonderbound’s run of “The Sandman” this month. “I remember looking the audience in eyes and being completely fearless.”
That was just one of his best moves. Patterson, 42, has also gotten to act, write poetry, choreograph and work across all performing-arts disciplines at Wonderbound — particularly in artistic director Garrett Ammon’s “Winter,” “Ice” and “Snow” shows, where Patterson developed the same character over the course of six years.
Any failures in these would reflect on Patterson, given his deep commitment over 14 seasons at Wonderbound. To his and the company’s credit, they’ve often resulted in sold-out successes, ambitious in scope and production as Ammon blends ideas and genres in his prolific work.
But Patterson almost didn’t make it to the dance world, or any artistic field. His path started in inner-city Baltimore; being at odds with a family that largely didn’t support his career; grappling with feelings of isolation and otherness; and diving head-first into full-time dancing at 18 years old — when all his friends and classmates from Baltimore School for the Arts headed to college.
“When I was 8 years old, my Uncle Linzell put me in a theater-program tap dancing class, but I got kicked out because no one bought me tap shoes,” Patterson said with a laugh from the lobby of Wonderbound’s Northeast Denver headquarters last week. “I hate tap dancing, so that’s my emotional trauma.”
Despite that, Patterson went on to dance at prestigious stages from the American Dance Festival to Vail Dance Festival. The Colorado Conservatory for Dance recently honored Patterson as a 2023 Legend of Dance, for which he’ll receive an award and give his oral history to the Dance Archive at the University of Denver. He’ll have to pick and choose, because there’s just so much.
Patterson had already decided to step down from professional dance in the late 2010s, but a torn labrum and recovery from that surgery, pandemic-induced stage exile, and a request from Wonderbound’s leaders to stay another year have kept him there — and happily, he said. The timing is unintentionally absurd.
Denver-based Wonderbound, which until recently has never had a permanent home, is shining up a former World War II airplane hangar that borders the scrubby east side of Park Hill Golf Course. They paid $2.1 million for the 16,000-square-foot building, having formerly rented it. The space sits next to a junkyard and the remnants of a brick home that looks like it got into a boxing match with The Iron Giant.
It’s a dancer’s dream, however: a brand new, 260-seat theater and wide stage, with dedicated costume, set-design, lighting, staff and rehearsal rooms that most theater companies would burn their prosceniums for.
“To have a home as a dancer is a great thing, because you spend your lifetime there,” Patterson said. “We finally have it, and it’s time for me to leave! But it does feel like everything I’ve worked for I can physically see now. When I sit in my dressing room spot, I know that all of my blood, sweat and tears helped make this. I danced for those curtains in there. I earned that locker.”
Patterson certainly looks at home at his backstage vanity, one of the 14 new, light-rimmed mirrors and desks where dancers prepare. Patterson loves the “Showgirls” vibe — a reference to the 1995 trash-classic, from which Patterson and his high school friends memorized all the hambone choreography. (Note: It truly is a great movie.)
In 1999, Patterson won a scholarship from New York’s pioneering Black dance company, the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater. He began dancing professionally when Ballet Memphis offered him an apprenticeship, following a nervy audition. He stayed there for six years, during which he met Wonderbound’s president, Dawn Fay and director Ammon, her longtime partner. Eventually feeling stymied in Memphis, Patterson left and freelanced as a dancer and teacher in Baltimore for nearly three years. An invitation to join Colorado’s esteemed Cleo Parker Robinson Dance Ensemble drew him to Colorado.
“It’s funny because at the time I was watching a ‘Greats of Modern Dance’ show on PBS with a friend, and Katherine Dunham’s ‘Barrelhouse Blues’ came on,” Patterson said. “I said, ‘I could do that,’ and literally two weeks later I was doing it.”
Less than two years after that, in 2009, Patterson received an invitation to join Wonderbound — then called Ballet Nouveau Colorado. The hop from Cleo Parker was both his own choice and a twist of fate, he said. Patterson’s Uncle Linzell, himself an actor, was the first “superstar” in Patteron’s life and his biggest supporter. He died in late 2011, and Linzell and Patterson’s final conversation was about delaying a visit to Baltimore until Patterson got his two-week, post-“Nutcracker” break.
“My mother called after midnight and said, ‘He’s gone.’ I broke down, sat by my window, and smoked a cigarette. And there was a jackrabbit sitting in this parking lot for hours as I sobbed over my uncle,” Patterson said. “Next day I go to work and Garrett pulls out his vision for Wonderbound, and it’s a jackrabbit. From that moment forward, I knew I was in the right place, and that this is where I was going to retire.”
Patterson leaves a trail of collaborators that stretches to the horizon, as is Ammon’s creative wont. That includes Flobots — the socially conscious Denver hip hop band behind the platinum single “Handlebars” — but also Colorado Symphony, Curious Theatre Company, Central City Opera and dozens of individual musicians. Unlike many retiring dancers, he will not immediately move into teaching after getting his flowers at the end of “The Sandman.” It’s a break from his trademark discipline and commitment, but one he’s been mulling for years.
“I want to go to culinary school. But I’m a 9 to 5 girl, a showgirl, so I’m not going to be gigging it. I mostly just want to take a break and chill after 24 nonstop years of dancing,” he said. “But I am going to see Beyoncé’s final show of her tour in Louisiana (on Sept. 27). I bought Destiny Child’s ‘The Writing’s on the Wall’ with my first paycheck in 1999. The concert is my retirement present to myself.”
If you go
“The Sandman.” Contemporary dance by Garrett Ammon, with live music from Clay Rose and Gasoline Lollipops. May 3-14 at Wonderbound, 3824 Dahlia St. in Denver. Tickets: $65, via 303-292-4700 or wonderbound.com.
