Photo: Danuta Matloch/Ministry of Culture and National Heritage.
Professor Ewa Wycichowska, excellent choreographer and educator, general and artistic director of the Polish Dance Theatre, was decorated with an Annual Minister of Culture and National Heritage Award. The distinction is awarded to prominent figures of Polish culture.
Ewa Wycichowska has put on over 70 dance productions in Poland and abroad. She has been leading the Polish Dance Theatre for 27 years, promoting Polish dance across five continents. She founded the International Contemporary Dance Workshops and the International Dance Theatre Festival (Dancing Poznań), which she now leads as artistic director. She is the only professor of music in Poland who specialises in dance. She heads the dance department of the Fryderyk Chopin University of Music in Warsaw.
The awards gala took place on 12 May 2015 at the Royal Castle in Warsaw (Kubicki Arcades) with Małgorzata Omilanowska, the culture minister, in attendance.
Full list of awardees:
1. theatre – Michał Zadara, Krzysztof Globisz
2. film – Tomasz Kot
3. music – Jacek Kaspszyk
4. literature – Olga Tokarczuk
5. visual arts – Zbigniew Warpechowski
6. folk art – Janusz Prusinowski
7. culture propagation – Michał Nogaś
8. dance – Ewa Wycichowska
9. preservation of cultural heritage – Maria Kałamajska-Saeed
10. lifetime award – Adam Zagajewski
11. patron of culture:
Orange Polska SA
Wojciech Pawłowski
The gala was co-hosted by Artur Andrus and featured a concert of Marek Grechuta’s songs performed by Wojciech Majewski and Grzegorz Turnau.
Annual Minister of Culture and National Heritage Awards have been handed out since 1997 to artists, creators, and animateurs for their lifetime achievements or outstanding performance in the year before. The prestigious distinction is a way for the Minister of Culture and National Heritage to give prominence the most important trends and developments in Polish culture by honouring people who stand behind them.
