Nusha Martynuk awarded Cleveland Arts Prize for Dance (10/31/99)

Nusha Martynuk awarded Cleveland Arts Prize for Dance

OBERLIN, Ohio - Choreographer Nusha Martynuk, professor of dance at Oberlin College, was recently awarded the 1999 Cleveland Arts Prize for Dance in recognition of her creative achievement in the field.

Ms. Martynuk's prize was the first to be awarded in the category of dance since 1995 - it had been that long since the prize jury felt there was a choreographer in the area who had created a body of work with a national reputation.

The awards ceremony for the prestigious prize, which was accorded, apart from dance, in the categories of literature, music and the visual arts, was held September 21 at the Cleveland Museum of Art. The event was covered in the Cleveland Plain Dealer (July 26) and the Oberlin News-Tribune (August 10).

The Cleveland Arts Prize for Dance recognizes the entire body of Ms. Martynuk's work as a choreographer, beginning in 1973, when she first started showing her work publicly.

As noted in a statement by Kathryn Karipides, chair of this year's dance jury and former winner of the prize for dance, the award honors Ms. Martynuk's powerful and daring work as a choreographer, citing such qualities as "... mastery of craft, impeccable use of spatial dynamics and her creativity and imagination in making dances that are physically daring and emotionally challenging... ," going on to note that her work has "an intense visual and visceral impact on the audience."

The statement singles out two recent works: "Requiem," a deeply moving solo in which, using an ingenious apparatus to suspend herself above the stage, Ms. Martynuk created vivid physical and emotional images of loss and remembrance; and the ensemble work "The Great Lalula," inspired by Oberlin composer Randy Coleman's original score, set to the nonsense-word poem "The Great Lalula," with music that pulsates with intense Latin beats and wild jazz. The latter was recently performed at Cain Park by The Repertory Project, Cleveland's professional modern dance repertory company.

Ms. Martynuk's passion for dance can be traced to her childhood when her father taught her his beloved Ukrainian folk dances. "Building on her childhood sense of rhythm and form, she has developed a daring style of choreography and a unique way of moving that has brought her national recognition as a choreographer, dancer and teacher," Ms. Karipides wrote.

Reflecting on her 26 years in dance, Ms. Martynuk was quoted by the Cleveland Plain Dealer as saying that "Sometimes my interests are out of step with what's trendy. I just do what I need to do."

In her work as choreographer, Ms Martynuk is often "motivated by a confluence of ideas topped off by a sense of urgency too great to ignore. Thoughts, moments and images combine." For example, her most recent piece, "Grave Blessings," was inspired by a story she heard on radio relating the travails of an Albanian doctor who was captured and tortured during the conflict in Kosovo; this harrowing account was eventually transformed by Ms. Martynuk and her students in the creation of a dance that celebrates man's altruism.

If indeed one work can somehow reflect the totality of one's work, then Ms. Martynuk considers that her 1995 solo piece titled "Bound" is perhaps "truest in terms of who I am as a choreographer, and as a dancer, and as a person ... It shows me sandwiched between two generations, parents and children, trying to offer guidance and support to both, and at the same time examining how each of those generations influenced me," she said in an article carried by the Oberlin paper.

Ms. Martynuk noted that in the beginning of her career she choreographed dances based on traditional Ukrainian folk dances, but later moved away from that style. Still, elements of Ukrainian folk dancing show up in her work even now.

"In recent years, what I feel is that the whole Slavic attitude of my upbringing is coming out in my work...It runs through in ways that I didn't expect," she noted.

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Ms. Martynuk earned her master's degree in 1976 from Temple University, where she studied with Hellmut Gottschild (a disciple of the German modern dance pioneer Mary Wigman) and danced with the acclaimed Zero Moving Company in Philadelphia.

She later moved to New York, where she was an independent solo choreographer and dancer with the federally funded Artists' Project. She also toured internationally with the Nikolais Dance Theatre.

In 1982, as artist-in-residence at Trinity College, she founded, with her husband and longtime collaborator Carter McAdams, a modern dance company called Partners: Martynuk/McAdams Dance.

Ms. Martynuk has been teaching in Oberlin College's outstanding theater and dance program since 1988.

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