From staff reports

DURHAM -- The American Dance Festival will award choreographer and director Martha Clarke with the 2010 Samuel H. Scripps/American Dance Festival Award for Lifetime Achievement. The award is considered the most important lifetime award for choreographers.

Established in 1981 by Samuel H. Scripps, the annual award honors choreographers who have dedicated their lives and talent to the creation of modern dance.

The $50,000 award will be presented to Clarke in a ceremony June 27 at 7:30 p.m. at The Cotton Room at Golden Belt in downtown Durham. Academy and Tony Award-winning screenwriter, and playwright Alfred Uhry will present the award.

As part of the ADF's 2010 season of What is Dance Theatre?, Clarke and Uhry will present an ADF-commissioned work based on the Shakers onstage at Reynolds Industries Theater at Duke University July 5-7. Inspired by the life of Ann Lee, founder of the Shaker movement, this new work will weave together theater, song, and dance to present the contradiction between the prim prudery of Shaker tenets and the wild, sexual nature they suppressed. The award ceremony program will include a partial preview of the new work.

Clarke is lauded the world over for her highly original, multidisciplinary approach to dance, theater, and opera productions. An early member of Pilobolus Dance Theatre and founder of Crowsnest (now Spring Lake Productions), Clarke has choreographed for the Nederlans Dance Theater, the Joffrey Ballet, American Ballet Theatre, Rambert Dance Company, and The Martha Graham Company, among many others. After a four-week residency in 2007, Martha Clarke's ADF-commissioned re-envisioning of "Garden of Earthly Delights" opened the ADF's 30th anniversary season in Durham. The work later appeared off-Broadway at the Minetta Lane Theatre in New York City and was met with critical acclaim.

As a director, Clarke's many original productions include "Vienna: Lusthaus," "Miracolo d'amore," "Endangered Species," "An Uncertain Hour," "The Hunger Artist," and "Vers la flamme." She directed the premiere of Christopher Hampton's "Alice's Adventures Underground" at the Royal National Theatre in London.

In opera, Clarke has directed "The Magic Flute" for Glimmerglass Opera and the Canadian Opera Company, "Cosi fan tutte" for Glimmerglass Opera, Tan Dun's "Marco Polo" for the Munich Biennale, the Hong Kong Festival, and New York City Opera, and Gluck's "Orfeo and Euridice" for the English National Opera and the New York City Opera. She directed "A Midsummer Night's Dream" for the American Repertory Theater and a new music/theater work, "Belle Epoque," based on the life of Toulouse Lautrec, at Lincoln Center Theater. Clarke's "Kaos," an evening of adapted Pirandello short stories, was presented at New York Theater Workshop.

Among the many past recipients of the Samuel H. Scripps/American Dance Festival Award include Martha Graham, Merce Cunningham, Paul Taylor, Hanya Holm, Alwin Nikolais, Katherine Dunham, Alvin Ailey and Erick Hawkins.

Performances during the ADF's 77th season will be presented at the Durham Performing Arts Center and Duke University's Reynolds Industries Theater from June 10-July 24. For detailed information about the 2010 Festival, the ADF School, community programs, and ticketing, visit www.americandancefestival.org.