Reviews

Quotes

"Yatkin is an impossible act to follow.”
- ChicagoTribune

“An artist to follow, a woman with deep reserves of feeling and experience and an invigorating, memorable way of expressing them”
– Washington Post

“Dance Magazine named Miss Yatkin "Top 25 to Watch” and it's easy to see
why: she is a fierce and supple performer”
– New York Times

"Nejla Yatkin doesn't disappear for an instant, not within a role and not under the impact of movement. She's a performer inside and outside, from a piercing gaze to expressive shoulder blades and from the coils of her long black hair to her finger tips and toes. As a dancer, she measures on a major scale, thanks to a strong, long body and the amplitude she sustains. Watching her can become hypnotic, even off stage". -Dance View Times

"Ms. Yatkin is a magician, telling tales and creating worlds with understated images. She is behind more than choreography." - New York Times

"Before a full house Sunday at Dance Place, Nejla Y. Yatkin's show was innovative in both form and content" - The Washington Post

"Choreographically Yatkin used the entire stage as she created her luminous images, framed in dramatic clarity and passion" - New York Times Journal

"In her five year retrospective Yatkin danced three of her solos, her dancing and conceptual designs broad enough to encompass juxtapositions and multiple characters." - Washington Post

"Nejla Yatkin brings to the stage an exotic air, an erotic note and an artistic intellect that's stiletto sharp." - DanceViewTimes

"Echoes...demonstrates the possibilities of Yatkin's visual and choreographic sensibilities. She has a sharp eye for designed elements, an introspective soul and exceptional technical capabilities." - -Washington Post

"Ms. Yatkin is a serious artist who tackles important themes in a way that is highly intellectual but always vividly provocative and dramatic." - Washington Times

"Each of the three works -- one by modern dance legend Jose Limon, two by Yatkin -- was a multilayered experience, and together they left a lasting impression of a woman with a distinctive voice in firm control of her art," - Washington Post

"Wheather she nested on the ground, arms undulating swan-like on the cushion of her black tulle skirt, or stood up to step out of that skirt into freedom, each motion was drawn slowly, carefullt, deliberately." - DanceView Times

"Her body floats as her skirt, but what is most extraordinary are the muscalr strength. steely focus and precision underlying the loveliness....." - Washington Post

"...Given current events it was Americans, not surprisingly, who caught the eye with their statement dances. Nejla Yatkin's "After" was a ravishing solo reflecting on the aftermath of 9/11. A magnificent fusion of dance, video and text fragments, Washington-based Yatkin's metaphor was a linr of empty shoes, and when she added her own to the line, and faded back into the darkness, it was profoundly moving moment..." - Paula Citron, The Globe and Mail, Toronto

"Nejla Yatkinspromising choreographiy displayed in her Saturday Dance Place show 'Gravity' proved why she's quickly gained a place in Washington dance..." - Washington Post

"The developing D.C.-based choreographer pulls from a rich accumulation of dance tradition: from Turkish folk dance to classic American modern forms, including the Martha Graham and Jose Limon techniques, to the expressionistic modern dance tradition of Germany and the apocalyptic theatricality of Japanese butoh." - Washington Post

"Ms. Yatkin has arms and legs that seem to defy nature with their detailed expressiveness" - Play DC