Press Coverage
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Ancestral Voices
The Plain Dealer
June 29, 2007
Ancestral Voices
The voices are back. "Ancestral Voices," that is, the dance-theater piece Nadia Tarnawsky and friends first presented in Cleveland in
2001. A new incarnation of the tale of two sisters who take different paths returns this weekend at the Cleveland Play House's Gordon
Square Theatre.
Tarnawsky, who teaches eurhythmics at the Cleveland Institute of Music and performs with Apollo's Singers, has reordered several of the
Ukrainian folk tunes. She also has engaged Verb Ballets dancer Mark Tomasic to provide new choreography to complement Natalie
Kapeluck's revised dances from the first production.
Tarnawsky's creation began coming into focus in 1999, when the Cleveland-born educator, singer and instrumentalist was ill in bed and
trying to avert boredom. She spent her recovery reading and translating Ukrainian poetry.
"If I'm dead tomorrow, what's my legacy?" Tarnawsky recalls thinking. "I want to do a show."
She set out to devise a piece with her closest friends, including choreographer Kapeluck and musicians from Ukraine, from where her
ancestors hailed. The poems Tarnawsky chose provided the arc of the narrative. They were read in English amid modern and traditional
dance along with musical selections of earthy and tender persuasion.
Tarnawsky, who plays the 57-stringed, zitherlike Ukrainian instrument known as the bandura, collected traditional folk songs to help tell the
story. She used puppets to fill out the imagery.
Tarnawsky was a student at Case Western Reserve University when she served as stage manager for a production of Romulus Linney's
"Childe Byron" with puppets by Richard Termine, whose admired creations include Placido Flamingo and Meryl Sheep for "Sesame Street."
Julie Taymor's art also influenced Tarnawsky's puppets in "Ancestral Voices."
"When you bring the puppets in, you don't watch who's manipulating it. You focus on the puppets," says Tarnawsky. "It's like having an
animal onstage. It's the only thing you watch."
Aside from Tomasic's new choreography and his participation as a dancer with colleagues from Verb Ballets, the new rendering of
"Ancestral Voices" is performed to recorded music in place of the original live music. Tarnawsky sounds like a kid in a candy store when
she talks about recording the music on multiple tracks, including her own voice singing four different parts at once.
"For the dancers, the music all stays the same," she says of the recorded version. "It makes it a lot easier for them."
Tarnawsky, who sings several a cappella passages live during performances, created two other, larger pieces after "Ancestral Voices" --
"Shadows of Our Forgotten Ancestors" and "Forest Song."
She is excited that her new production of "Ancestral Voices" is gaining attention elsewhere. It was well-received early this month at the
Cincinnati Fringe Festival. The production plays the New York International Fringe Festival in August.
"Both are adjudicated festivals," she says. "They picked us. I'm very happy."
-Donald Rosenberg
City Beat
June 06, 2007
Ancestral Voices
This is a delightful dance-theater experience that takes you straight into the poignant and poetic world of magical Ukrainian folklore, where
the moon dances with the stars in the blue vault of heaven, spring blazes with plentiful flowers and willows bend like drunkards in the wind.
At base are the ancient traditions of oral storytelling and the piercing tone and expressive embellishment of traditional Ukrainian “open-
throat” singing, both mastered by narrator Nadia Tarnawsky. Her solid, motherly presence anchors the hour-long performance, which
weaves through eight scenes of poetry, dancing, singing and puppetry loosely tracing the divergent life paths of two sisters, one rich and one
poor.
Alternately speaking and singing, with deftly interspersed Ukrainian-to-English translations, Tarnawsky’s voice joins additional recorded
voices and traditional ethnic instruments including cimbalom, violin, sopilka, zozulka and bandura, according to program notes. Dancers
Erin Conway, Catherine Meredith, Anna Roberts and Mark Tomasic (who had a terrific solo portraying Fire) bring emotion, vitality and
clarity to Natalie M. Kapeluck’s choreography, portraying a variety of characters and situations extremely well within the limited space they
have to work at the Contemporary Arts Center’s black box theater. They also become puppeteers and prop masters, as needed.
Ancestral Voices has so much aural and visual richness that following the sisters’ lives eventually didn’t seem nearly as important as
marveling at the wondrous tales being told along the way. As “the stars speak to the moon,” two dancers loft illuminated globes that
represent the moon and a star dancing a charming duet.
A new bride, thrust into the home of her unfriendly mother-in-law, is transformed into a poplar tree during her husband’s absence, which the
mother-in-law then commands him to cut. The tree begs, “Don’t chop me, beloved. I am your wife.” It is too late, but a child is found
within the branches of the tree.
A barrel-maker’s daughter (portrayed cleverly by a life-size puppet with two “live” arms) refuses a man’s advances and runs away. When he
catches her, she tells him she would rather “rot in the grave than live in slavery with you.” He dispatches her, but her grave beckons to the
Wind (given voice by an undulating dancer and a flute), saying “Do not let me fade away.”
A woman sings “Mother, I Love a Man of the Black Sea” who leads “me barefoot through the frost.” When her lover disappears at sea
(from a wooden boat floating on top of a fabric sea), the bereft woman vows to become a mermaid, “find him and embrace him.”
The final scene evokes a celebration feast but, like all things folkloric, brushed with melancholy. When, surrounded by masked dancer in the
guise of Earth, Wind, Water and Fire, Tarnawsky’s singer finally prophesies that her soul “shall speak in the leaves of the willow tree” and
intones “remember me when I am gone.” It's a lovely and heartbreaking moment, as authentic as you're likely to get in these days of easy
virtual entertainment. Grade: A-
— Kathy Valin
The Enquirer
June 05, 2007
Ancestral Voices
It’s not that Fringe entry Ancestral Voices by MN2, a Cleveland dance company, is a particularly brilliant production. Built around
Ukrainian folk tales and songs, “Voices” often feels like it is being smothered by translations that try harder to be significant than clear.
But ultimately, it succeeds because creator/director Nadia Tarnawsky is unerringly focused on what she wants and how she wants to
accomplish it.
This is a show with style and a clear sense of drama. Just as important, Tarnawsky has populated it with five first-rate performers, starting
with herself as singer and narrator.
Along with four other performers – dancers Erin Conway, Catherine Meredith, Anna Roberts and co-choreographer (with Natalie M.
Kapeluck) Mark Tomasic, they give the eclectic material character and a dramatic shape it simply couldn’t have achieved in the hands of
lesser performers.
Tomasic and Kapeluck’s choreography is most effective in scenes where it exists to underscore Tarnawsky’s narrative. But when it steps out
of the play and becomes a full-fledged dance scene, it flounders: It looks like choreography even the modestly experienced dance watcher
has seen dozens of times.
Nor is that the end of the unevenness. The show feels far longer then its 70 minutes. And Tarnawsky’s storytelling is often far too muddled.
She’s a compelling presence and a gifted singer. She could often serve her material better by abandoning a poem or two and just telling the
stories she so ardently wants to share.
Ancestral Voices repeats Tuesday and Wednesday, June 5-6.
Though not yet reviewed, one of Greater Cincinnati’s most vibrant young dance ensembles is also performing as part of the Fringe. Exhale
Dance Tribe performs at 7 p.m. Thursday and Friday at the Contemporary Arts Center, 6th and Walnut, downtown. For more information,
go to www.cincyfringe.com.
-David Lyman
The Plain Dealer
July 1, 2000
Ancestral Voices
Ukrainian folk traditions are gracefully melded with modern dance and Japanese-style puppetry in Ancestral Voices, a poetic dance-theatre
piece that premiered Thursday night at Tremont's Inside Art Gallery. A collaborative venture based on Ukrainian folk songs and poems in
translations by Helene Turkewicz-Sanko and Nadia Tarnawsky of the Cleveland Institute of Music, the intimate show is directed by Case
Western Reserve University graduate Michael D. Flohr and choreographed by CWRU graduate student Beth Salemi and Pittsburgh dancer
Natalie M. Kapeluck.
The lovely accompanying folk music, arranged by Divchata V Kukhni (a Ukrainian folk ensemble), is played on traditional instruments by
Alexander Fedoriouk, Andrei Pidkivka and Don Safranek. Completing the ensemble are CWRU dancers Ken Gasch and Sharon Manuel.
The exquisite texts, sung and spoken in Ukrainian and English, tell an ancient tale of two sisters, one wealthy, the other widowed.
Integrated into the story are Ukrainian wedding rituals, references to the four seasons and colorful images of earth, wind, fire and water.
Some English words, spoken over the Ukrainian lyrics, cannot be heard. But the intention of each scene is clear.
Tarnawsky, the central figure, narrates the production like an earthy Ukrainian Scheherazade. Singing with piercing tone and expressive
embellishments, she shifts easily from speech to song in two languages and joins the ensemble playing bandura, the 57-stringed Ukrainian
folk instrument. Dancer Kapeluck adds vocal harmony and the instrumentalists create the sounds of another culture on cimbalom, sopilka
(vertical wooden flute) and percussion.
Dancers Salemi and Manuel as the sisters, Gasch as all the male characters and Kapeluck as a member of the community are restricted to
the small-scale movement vocabulary that can be contained in a tiny space. Besides performing lunges, balances and floor work, they
evoke illusions of folk dances and festive ceremonies. In the opening scene, they establish a mysterious atmosphere with the presentation of
candlelit clay vessels. At the wedding, they give the couple a symbolic loaf of bread and wrap their clasped hands in an embroidered stole.
The production, tastefully designed by Anonymous 3, integrates fabrics that represent the sea and a banquet table, ribbons that are woven
into defining spaces and a carved boat that sails over the stormy waters. The simple costumes like the props, say much with an economy of
means. Masks, laurel wreaths, lighted headdresses and sheer overgarments transform the black-clad dancers into various characters. A
fringed red gown gives the narrator the appearance of a great earth mother.
Especially effective is the imaginative use of puppets. One, cradled in the narrator's arms, represents new life. Another skillfully
manipulated by two dancers, gives shape to a tragic woman who would rather "rot in the gray earth than be a slave" to a man she does not
love.
Rich in language, metaphor and meaning, the production is a beauty that deserves additional showings after its final scheduled performance
tonight at Inside.
-Wilma Salisbury
The Plain Dealer
June 29, 2007
Ancestral Voices
The voices are back. "Ancestral Voices," that is, the dance-theater piece Nadia Tarnawsky and friends first presented in Cleveland in
2001. A new incarnation of the tale of two sisters who take different paths returns this weekend at the Cleveland Play House's Gordon
Square Theatre.
Tarnawsky, who teaches eurhythmics at the Cleveland Institute of Music and performs with Apollo's Singers, has reordered several of the
Ukrainian folk tunes. She also has engaged Verb Ballets dancer Mark Tomasic to provide new choreography to complement Natalie
Kapeluck's revised dances from the first production.
Tarnawsky's creation began coming into focus in 1999, when the Cleveland-born educator, singer and instrumentalist was ill in bed and
trying to avert boredom. She spent her recovery reading and translating Ukrainian poetry.
"If I'm dead tomorrow, what's my legacy?" Tarnawsky recalls thinking. "I want to do a show."
She set out to devise a piece with her closest friends, including choreographer Kapeluck and musicians from Ukraine, from where her
ancestors hailed. The poems Tarnawsky chose provided the arc of the narrative. They were read in English amid modern and traditional
dance along with musical selections of earthy and tender persuasion.
Tarnawsky, who plays the 57-stringed, zitherlike Ukrainian instrument known as the bandura, collected traditional folk songs to help tell the
story. She used puppets to fill out the imagery.
Tarnawsky was a student at Case Western Reserve University when she served as stage manager for a production of Romulus Linney's
"Childe Byron" with puppets by Richard Termine, whose admired creations include Placido Flamingo and Meryl Sheep for "Sesame Street."
Julie Taymor's art also influenced Tarnawsky's puppets in "Ancestral Voices."
"When you bring the puppets in, you don't watch who's manipulating it. You focus on the puppets," says Tarnawsky. "It's like having an
animal onstage. It's the only thing you watch."
Aside from Tomasic's new choreography and his participation as a dancer with colleagues from Verb Ballets, the new rendering of
"Ancestral Voices" is performed to recorded music in place of the original live music. Tarnawsky sounds like a kid in a candy store when
she talks about recording the music on multiple tracks, including her own voice singing four different parts at once.
"For the dancers, the music all stays the same," she says of the recorded version. "It makes it a lot easier for them."
Tarnawsky, who sings several a cappella passages live during performances, created two other, larger pieces after "Ancestral Voices" --
"Shadows of Our Forgotten Ancestors" and "Forest Song."
She is excited that her new production of "Ancestral Voices" is gaining attention elsewhere. It was well-received early this month at the
Cincinnati Fringe Festival. The production plays the New York International Fringe Festival in August.
"Both are adjudicated festivals," she says. "They picked us. I'm very happy."
-Donald Rosenberg
City Beat
June 06, 2007
Ancestral Voices
This is a delightful dance-theater experience that takes you straight into the poignant and poetic world of magical Ukrainian folklore, where
the moon dances with the stars in the blue vault of heaven, spring blazes with plentiful flowers and willows bend like drunkards in the wind.
At base are the ancient traditions of oral storytelling and the piercing tone and expressive embellishment of traditional Ukrainian “open-
throat” singing, both mastered by narrator Nadia Tarnawsky. Her solid, motherly presence anchors the hour-long performance, which
weaves through eight scenes of poetry, dancing, singing and puppetry loosely tracing the divergent life paths of two sisters, one rich and one
poor.
Alternately speaking and singing, with deftly interspersed Ukrainian-to-English translations, Tarnawsky’s voice joins additional recorded
voices and traditional ethnic instruments including cimbalom, violin, sopilka, zozulka and bandura, according to program notes. Dancers
Erin Conway, Catherine Meredith, Anna Roberts and Mark Tomasic (who had a terrific solo portraying Fire) bring emotion, vitality and
clarity to Natalie M. Kapeluck’s choreography, portraying a variety of characters and situations extremely well within the limited space they
have to work at the Contemporary Arts Center’s black box theater. They also become puppeteers and prop masters, as needed.
Ancestral Voices has so much aural and visual richness that following the sisters’ lives eventually didn’t seem nearly as important as
marveling at the wondrous tales being told along the way. As “the stars speak to the moon,” two dancers loft illuminated globes that
represent the moon and a star dancing a charming duet.
A new bride, thrust into the home of her unfriendly mother-in-law, is transformed into a poplar tree during her husband’s absence, which the
mother-in-law then commands him to cut. The tree begs, “Don’t chop me, beloved. I am your wife.” It is too late, but a child is found
within the branches of the tree.
A barrel-maker’s daughter (portrayed cleverly by a life-size puppet with two “live” arms) refuses a man’s advances and runs away. When he
catches her, she tells him she would rather “rot in the grave than live in slavery with you.” He dispatches her, but her grave beckons to the
Wind (given voice by an undulating dancer and a flute), saying “Do not let me fade away.”
A woman sings “Mother, I Love a Man of the Black Sea” who leads “me barefoot through the frost.” When her lover disappears at sea
(from a wooden boat floating on top of a fabric sea), the bereft woman vows to become a mermaid, “find him and embrace him.”
The final scene evokes a celebration feast but, like all things folkloric, brushed with melancholy. When, surrounded by masked dancer in the
guise of Earth, Wind, Water and Fire, Tarnawsky’s singer finally prophesies that her soul “shall speak in the leaves of the willow tree” and
intones “remember me when I am gone.” It's a lovely and heartbreaking moment, as authentic as you're likely to get in these days of easy
virtual entertainment. Grade: A-
— Kathy Valin
The Enquirer
June 05, 2007
Ancestral Voices
It’s not that Fringe entry Ancestral Voices by MN2, a Cleveland dance company, is a particularly brilliant production. Built around
Ukrainian folk tales and songs, “Voices” often feels like it is being smothered by translations that try harder to be significant than clear.
But ultimately, it succeeds because creator/director Nadia Tarnawsky is unerringly focused on what she wants and how she wants to
accomplish it.
This is a show with style and a clear sense of drama. Just as important, Tarnawsky has populated it with five first-rate performers, starting
with herself as singer and narrator.
Along with four other performers – dancers Erin Conway, Catherine Meredith, Anna Roberts and co-choreographer (with Natalie M.
Kapeluck) Mark Tomasic, they give the eclectic material character and a dramatic shape it simply couldn’t have achieved in the hands of
lesser performers.
Tomasic and Kapeluck’s choreography is most effective in scenes where it exists to underscore Tarnawsky’s narrative. But when it steps out
of the play and becomes a full-fledged dance scene, it flounders: It looks like choreography even the modestly experienced dance watcher
has seen dozens of times.
Nor is that the end of the unevenness. The show feels far longer then its 70 minutes. And Tarnawsky’s storytelling is often far too muddled.
She’s a compelling presence and a gifted singer. She could often serve her material better by abandoning a poem or two and just telling the
stories she so ardently wants to share.
Ancestral Voices repeats Tuesday and Wednesday, June 5-6.
Though not yet reviewed, one of Greater Cincinnati’s most vibrant young dance ensembles is also performing as part of the Fringe. Exhale
Dance Tribe performs at 7 p.m. Thursday and Friday at the Contemporary Arts Center, 6th and Walnut, downtown. For more information,
go to www.cincyfringe.com.
-David Lyman
The Plain Dealer
July 1, 2000
Ancestral Voices
Ukrainian folk traditions are gracefully melded with modern dance and Japanese-style puppetry in Ancestral Voices, a poetic dance-theatre
piece that premiered Thursday night at Tremont's Inside Art Gallery. A collaborative venture based on Ukrainian folk songs and poems in
translations by Helene Turkewicz-Sanko and Nadia Tarnawsky of the Cleveland Institute of Music, the intimate show is directed by Case
Western Reserve University graduate Michael D. Flohr and choreographed by CWRU graduate student Beth Salemi and Pittsburgh dancer
Natalie M. Kapeluck.
The lovely accompanying folk music, arranged by Divchata V Kukhni (a Ukrainian folk ensemble), is played on traditional instruments by
Alexander Fedoriouk, Andrei Pidkivka and Don Safranek. Completing the ensemble are CWRU dancers Ken Gasch and Sharon Manuel.
The exquisite texts, sung and spoken in Ukrainian and English, tell an ancient tale of two sisters, one wealthy, the other widowed.
Integrated into the story are Ukrainian wedding rituals, references to the four seasons and colorful images of earth, wind, fire and water.
Some English words, spoken over the Ukrainian lyrics, cannot be heard. But the intention of each scene is clear.
Tarnawsky, the central figure, narrates the production like an earthy Ukrainian Scheherazade. Singing with piercing tone and expressive
embellishments, she shifts easily from speech to song in two languages and joins the ensemble playing bandura, the 57-stringed Ukrainian
folk instrument. Dancer Kapeluck adds vocal harmony and the instrumentalists create the sounds of another culture on cimbalom, sopilka
(vertical wooden flute) and percussion.
Dancers Salemi and Manuel as the sisters, Gasch as all the male characters and Kapeluck as a member of the community are restricted to
the small-scale movement vocabulary that can be contained in a tiny space. Besides performing lunges, balances and floor work, they
evoke illusions of folk dances and festive ceremonies. In the opening scene, they establish a mysterious atmosphere with the presentation of
candlelit clay vessels. At the wedding, they give the couple a symbolic loaf of bread and wrap their clasped hands in an embroidered stole.
The production, tastefully designed by Anonymous 3, integrates fabrics that represent the sea and a banquet table, ribbons that are woven
into defining spaces and a carved boat that sails over the stormy waters. The simple costumes like the props, say much with an economy of
means. Masks, laurel wreaths, lighted headdresses and sheer overgarments transform the black-clad dancers into various characters. A
fringed red gown gives the narrator the appearance of a great earth mother.
Especially effective is the imaginative use of puppets. One, cradled in the narrator's arms, represents new life. Another skillfully
manipulated by two dancers, gives shape to a tragic woman who would rather "rot in the gray earth than be a slave" to a man she does not
love.
Rich in language, metaphor and meaning, the production is a beauty that deserves additional showings after its final scheduled performance
tonight at Inside.
-Wilma Salisbury