It wasn’t just the way Dallas choreographer Darrell Lanier Cleveland commanded the stage that his students and colleagues say they’ll miss the…
It wasn’t just the way Dallas choreographer Darrell Lanier Cleveland commanded the stage that his students and colleagues say they’ll miss the most.
It’s his smile, his infectious energy, his effortless style.
Dallas’ dance community is reeling from the death of Cleveland, who was fatally shot on June 23 while driving in downtown Dallas, near City Hall. Police say the investigation is ongoing, and no arrests have been made.
Friends, students and colleagues will celebrate Cleveland’s life from 5 to 7 p.m. Sunday at Contemporary Ballet Dallas, where he taught for more than a decade. Dancers are invited to participate in Cleveland’s trademark warm-up led by his former student and colleague Shelby Stanley.
“I think it will help give some closure for people — to have a moment where we can come together and pay tribute to him and celebrate the life he had, ” Lindsay DiGiuseppe Bowman, school director of Contemporary Ballet Dallas, said.
Kirsten Mapps, an incoming high school freshman at Grand Prairie Fine Arts Academy, couldn’t believe it when she heard the news. Cleveland was her dance instructor at the school every other week during seventh grade, and Mapps remembers counting down the days until he was back.
“When you take a class with him, you forget you’re taking a ballet class, ” Mapps said, adding that her least favorite style of dance is ballet. “He’ll turn on some R&B, some pop music. He’ll show you and then ask you to do it. It’s just like a completely different class.”
Mapps and her friends would head to lunch, still talking about the routine they learned from Cleveland that day.
“Everyone’s like, ‘Remember that combination Mr. Cleveland taught us?'” she said.
Cleveland, 45, danced with Top 10 recording artists Toni Braxton, EnVogue and Monica before spending eight seasons dancing with Dallas Black Dance Theatre. He was also a choreographer and coach at the Coppell-based Ballet Ensemble of Texas, a teacher at the Mary Lois School of Dance, Contemporary Ballet Dallas and Brookhaven College — to name a few.
According to his biography for Contemporary Ballet Dallas, Cleveland performed in stage productions, including Nickelodeon Children’s Kids Choice Awards, Soul Train, Showtime at the Apollo and Centennial Olympic Park Festival.
Tiffani Rogers, co-owner of the Mary Lois School of Dance, said Cleveland quickly went from a colleague to a friend. He was most recently a senior company jazz class instructor for the studio.
“He literally touched thousands of people’s lives — just one person who is not a celebrity, ” she said.
Cleveland’s favorite dance was contemporary ballet, according to Rogers and former students, but he could breeze through any dance style.
“He had the ability to bring music to life through his dances, ” Rogers said. “Whether it was a piece he had worked on for months or something he made up on the spot, it was always creative and interestingly detailed.”
Cleveland was born and raised in Jacksonville, Fla., and received his bachelor’s degree in accounting from Morehouse College in Georgia. He had professional dance training at Harrison Dance Company and Lula Washington Dance Theatre. In May 2015, Cleveland graduated from Texas Woman’s University with a Master of Fine Arts in dance.
Cleveland’s mother, Patricia Cleveland, said she learned about the death of her only child after the police contacted her sister.
“He loved his family, he loved to dance, and he was always a joy to be around, ” she said Tuesday.
Even though he received his undergraduate degree in accounting, Patricia knew dance was always her son’s passion. His friend told her that Cleveland would say he “got this degree for my mother, but I’m doing dance for me.”
Cleveland spent most of his life dancing, according to Patricia. In junior high school, Cleveland surprised her while she sat in the audience during the school’s dance pageant. Cleveland had spent hours choreographing one of the dances and kept it from his mother until she heard his name over the loudspeaker.
“They said ‘choreographed by Darrell Cleveland, ‘” she said. “I was elated.”
After a brief stint in California and Atlanta, Cleveland headed to Dallas to become a principal dancer for the Dallas Black Dance Theatre in the ’90s, Patricia said. The two would travel around Texas when Patricia visited her son.
“When I’d come to Dallas to visit him, he’d take me anywhere I wanted to go, ” Patricia said. “We had a lot of things we were going to do in the future after I retired from work.”
Cleveland is survived by his mother, step-father Emanuel Sheppard and three aunts, Shirley McNair, Joann Cleveland, Catherine Sabb. Cleveland’s funeral was held Aug. 5 at the Abysinnia Missionary Baptist Church in Jacksonville.
