The committee of the Jan Kiepura Music Theatre Awards has announced this year’s winners. Yuka Ebihara and Vladimir Yaroshenko were chosen the best dancers of the past season at Poland’s music theatres. The Polish National Ballet’s principal dancers were nominated by the Teatr Wielki – Polish National Opera in the best female dancer and best male dancer categories for their double performance as Hippolyta/Titania and Theseus/Oberon in John Neumeier’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
The Kiepura Awards, granted every year by the Mazovian Music Theatre in a number of categories, are presented to artists of Polish music theatres. The jury, chaired by the theatre’s director Włodzimierz Izban, includes Zdzisława Donat, Tatiana Kwiatkowska, Zofia Rudnicka, Kazimierz Kord and Wiesław Ochman. Ballet artists who won awards this year also included Izadora Weiss and Robert Glumbek who both came first in the best choreographer category. The winners in the other categories included conductor Tadeusz Kozłowski, director Janusz Wiśniewski, stage designer Justin C. Arienti, singers Karolina Sikora, Anna Wiśniewska-Shoppa, Mariusz Godlewski and Rafał Siwek, and the authors of the Poznań production of Weinberg’s The Portrait. Bernard Ładysz, Warsaw’s famous opera bass singer, received a lifetime achievement award.
The official presentation of the Music Theatre Awards and Jan Kiepura statuettes took place on 22 May 2014 at the Matecznik Mazowsze concert hall in Otrębusy. Our dancers performed Tristan and Isolde’s final duet from Krzysztof Pastor’s ballet Tristan to music by Richard Wagner.
Pictured: Yuka Ebihara and Vladimir Yaroshenko during the presentation of awards, photos by Dariusz Kowalewski
