As a boy growing up in a tough Baltimore inner city neighborhood, Damien Patterson fell in love with modern dance.

A dangerous romance.

No surprise that he didn’t find much support for it.

“My family tried to talk me out of it,” he recalled, flashing an irrepressible smile under a few short dangling braids. Luckily, he had an enthusiastic ally.

“My uncle was my only fan,” he said. And that’s all Patterson needed. Now a youthful-looking 42, he’s preparing to retire after a lengthy dance career, highlighted by 14 seasons with Denver’s Wonderbound company.

Long, lean and soft-spoken, Patterson described a performing life built on a natural talent and a self confidence that grew from the encouragement of a man who saw something in his 8-year-old nephew.

“He was an actor in the community theater,” Patterson said of his late uncle. “He enrolled me in an inner-city dance program. He was so supportive. We’d be walking through a market and he’d say, ‘OK, now let me see you jump!’ Later, I got in the Baltimore School of the Arts. That’s where everything really turned on for me. I was in a dance class, and the teacher’s posture was amazing. She just didn’t look human.”

Stretching out in a chair in the lobby of Wonderbound’s almost-com

pleted new home base in North Park Hill, Patterson spoke of trying to catch up on the training he missed during his formative years.

“I was there to do the work. My teacher, Stephanie Powell, taught me on weekends to help me out. All along, I wanted to create my own path.”

In 1999, he won a scholarship to study at the prestigious Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater in New York, and in that year, took a bus to Tennessee and won an audition to become an apprentice with Ballet Memphis. He spent six seasons there, and it proved a time of major development. Besides improving his technique, Patterson discovered he had a knack for choreography.

“I found that when I listened to music, I could see movement,” he said. Surprisingly, he made no mention of pursuing dance-making as a new career option. Ballet Memphis gave him six good years of growth, he admitted. Still, “I did all I could do there. I hit the glass ceiling.”

One benefit that would pay off later was his work with a Memphis choreog

rapher named Garrett Ammon and his dancer wife, Dawn Fay. The two would later become founders and co-leaders of Wonderbound.

No, they didn’t lure Patterson to their company in Denver. It was another local dance stalwart, Cleo Parker Robinson, who met the young dancer at a conference in Dallas and invited him to join her company. But first, he left Memphis to spend a year back in Baltimore teaching dance to inner city kids.

In 2008, with encouragement from his old teacher Stephanie Powell, Patterson accepted Robinson’s invitation and joined her Denver company, Cleo Parker Robinson Dance. There, he was able to dance some of Alvin Ailey’s works, which proved invaluable to his technical growth.

At the same time, he began to have doubts about being in Robinson’s troupe. “Maybe this is not for me,” he found himself thinking. “They all kept calling me ‘ the ballet boy.’” It was time to change partners.

Ammon recalled the path that led Patterson to Wonderbound (then known as Ballet Nouveau Colorado). “It was sheer coincidence that Damien was in Denver with Cleo,” he said. “Dawn and I had joined (Ballet) Memphis in ‘99 and he was already there. He was only 17 and fresh out of high school. Even then, he became my go-to dancer. I paired Dawn with Damien a lot. He always had a well-defined sense of himself as a dancer.”

Fay described the switch from Robinson’s company to Wonderbound as seamless.

“He fit in beautifully. It was amazing how he had grown as a dancer. By that point he was 28!” Ammon insisted that the changeover had to be Patterson’s decision – and it was.

For Patterson, moving to Wonderbound in 2009 was an opportunity to spread his wings.

“I knew I could grow as a dancer with Garrett and Dawn. We go after it here. We don’t wait around. I love the way I’m allowed to tell stories (in dance).”

Ammon described a special connection with Patterson. “There’s something unique in the way he enters his process as a dancer. We can spend an hour together, and we barely speak. His instincts are so strong. He’s always thinking of his (dance) partner. There’s a synergy that occurs that’s very rare.”

After 14 years together, Wonderbound and its veteran dancer are preparing to say goodbye as the company inaugurates its new studio and performance facility with performances of “The Sandman” from May 3-14 at 3824 Dahlia St.

Naturally, emotions will be high in this full-evening work, created by Ammon and described by the company as “a newfangled Western.” The choreographer praised Patterson’s role as Adam in the work, noting, “He takes you on a journey.” Fay was more succinct: “You’ll cry.”

The May 14 closing matinee (already sold out) will be special, all agreed. “We want to celebrate Damien,” Ammon said. “Others will come along and dance the roles he created, but you’re not going to replace him. You’re never really going to replace a dancer. It’s just a new voice that will come forward.

“Still, there will be a deep ache in our heart.”