Marek Cholewa

Associate professor of dance Marek Cholewa remembers dancing at his sister's wedding. He was 7.

"Weddings in Poland are a day and a half at minimum," he says, "and I was dancing the whole night. I was one of those dancers who never tired, dancing with all the ladies." That stamina, along with his obvious love for dance, impressed Cholewa's parents enough to push him toward ballet as a career. By age 10, he was among 50 Polish children chosen (from a pool of about 1,000) to be groomed as a professional dancer. Cholewa moved to Russia in 1978 to study at the Rimsky-Korsakov Music State Conservatory. After earning his master's, Dame Margot Fonteyn (retired star of London's Royal Ballet) recruited Cholewa and his wife, dancer Rosanna Ruffo, to join the National Ballet of Panama, where Fonteyn was artistic director. Cholewa served as assistant artistic director, master teacher and choreographer.

In 1988, a friend in New Orleans told him Butler needed a dance teacher, and he joined the faculty that year. At the same time, his wife signed a contract with Indianapolis Ballet Theatre. They've made Indianapolis their home ever since.

Ruffo retired as a dancer in 1996 and now teaches dance at Butler. The couple has three children - Aleksander, who's a U.S. Marine, and Dariusz Sebastian and Anastasia Victoria, who are in elementary school.

Cholewa says he chose to stay at Butler because "the university is willing and supports very strongly all my outside activities. Because of that, I can travel overseas, to South America, Asia, do my works and still be a full-time professor, which is really important for my artistic development."

He's taken students overseas to study and perform in St. Petersburg, Russia, the Republic of Panama, the Republic of Georgia and Taiwan. In 2003, he earned a Fulbright Scholarship to conduct dance research, choreograph and teach in Poland.