Dancer, choreographer Nejla Yatkin in concert

Renowned dancer and choreographer Nejla Yatkin, the 2010 Marcus Artist in the Performing Arts Department (PAD) in Arts & Sciences’ Dance Program, will present an informal concert of her work at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, Jan. 26.

Yatkin — who was born and raised in Berlin but has Turkish roots — draws on a range of dance traditions to explore issues of memory, migration, identity and multiculturalism. The program will include her extended solo “For People With Wings,” an excerpt of which was featured in Dance St. Louis’ Spring to Dance series last May.

“(Yatkin) is a magician, telling tales and creating worlds with understated images and movement,” The New York Times wrote of the piece in 2008. “(She) is after more than choreography.”

Also on the program will be a screening of “The Wall,” a short film Yatkin made as part of her “Berlin Wall Project,” marking last year’s 20th anniversary of the fall of the wall.

The performance is free and open to the public and will take place in the Annelise Mertz Dance Studio, Room 207, Mallinckrodt Student Center, 6445 Forsyth Blvd.

For more information, call (314) 935-5858.

Morris D. Marcus, M.D.

Immediately following the performance, the PAD will host a memorial reception in honor of Morris D. Marcus, M.D., a dermatologist and professor emeritus in the School of Medicine, who died last August at the age of 99.

Marcus established the Margaret Marcus Dance Fund, which sponsors the Marcus Residency, in 1988. The fund honors his wife, Margaret, a dancer, teacher and choreographer who died in 1969. To date it has brought more than a dozen nationally and internationally known choreographers to campus.

“The Marcus Residency provides important opportunities for dance students to experience a wide range of approaches to technique and choreography and for local audiences to see acclaimed artists who are often new to St. Louis,” said Mary-Jean Cowell, Ph.D., associate professor of dance and coordinator of the Dance Program. “This year’s residency also provides an opportunity to remember and honor Dr. Marcus and his enthusiastic engagement with both the sciences and the performing arts.”

Born in St. Louis, Marcus was a 1934 graduate of the School of Medicine and served as chief of dermatology at Jewish Hospital for 51 years. He also served as chief of dermatology at the old St. Louis County Hospital and as a clinical instructor at his alma mater from 1939-1988.

During World War II, Marcus was a battalion surgeon with the U.S. Army’s 90th Infantry Division and, during the D-Day invasion, was wounded by shrapnel at Utah Beach. To repair his shattered hand, Marcus underwent 17 surgeries and eventually regained its full use, thanks to the efforts of pioneering hand surgeon — and fellow WUSTL alumnus — J. Barrett Brown, M.D. (1923).

After the war, Marcus returned to St. Louis and resumed both clinical practice and his teaching duties. In 1959, he was appointed assistant professor of clinical medicine in dermatology and, in 1974, was appointed associate professor. In 1980, he co-authored a medical textbook, “Diseases of the External Ear: An Otologic-Dermatologic Manual.” He was named professor emeritus in 1986.

Marcus established The Annual Morris D. Marcus Lecture in Dermatology in 1988, the same year he retired from clinical practice. He then embarked on a “second career” as a writer, chronicling his World War II experiences for Washington University Magazine and his mother’s recollections about pogroms in Lithuania for Gateway Heritage, the journal of the Missouri Historical Society.

He also wrote a play, “The Holy Three,” about the study of ancient languages. In 1999, Marcus received the School of Medicine’s Alumni/Faculty Award, which honors outstanding professional accomplishment.

The memorial reception will take place in the Orchid Room of the Danforth University Center. Attendees will include Marcus’ son, Joseph, and daughter, Terese Edelstein, who will present an additional bequest of $50,000 to the Marcus Dance Fund. RSVPs are requested. For more information, call (314) 935-5858.

Nejla Yatkin

Currently an artist-in-residence at the University of Notre Dame, Yatkin trained at Die Etage, a performing arts conservatory in Berlin, graduating with honors in 1993. She then danced as a principal with numerous companies in Germany and the United States, including Fountainhead Tanz Theater, Dance Butter Tokyo, Pyro Space Ballet, Cleo Parker Robinson Dance Ensemble and Dayton Contemporary Dance Company.

She also has worked with many of today’s leading choreographers, ranging from Katherine Dunham and Donald McKayle to Eleo Pomare, Dianne McIntyre and Ron Brown.

Yatkin has set her own choreography on Dallas Black Dance Theatre, the Washington Ballet, The Maryland Dance Ensemble and the Baltimore Ballet, among others. In 2009 her “Berlin Wall Project” toured Berlin, Los Angeles, New York and Washington, D.C. She is preparing to tour Central America as part of the Americas Project, supported by the National Performance Network and LaRed.

Yatkin’s many honors include four Artist Fellowships from the D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities, an agency of the National Endowment for the Arts, as well as both a Princess Grace Choreography Fellowship (2008) and a Special Project Award (2009) from the Princess Grace Foundation in New York.

In addition to her public performance, Yatkin will be in residence with the Dance Program Jan. 25-27 to conduct a series of master classes in modern dance and improvisation.