Nejla Yatkin

Nejla Yatkin is an internationally acclaimed choreographer, dancer, filmmaker, and educator whose career spans over four decades. A 2023 Guggenheim Fellow in Choreography, Princess Grace Fellow, National Dance Project Awardee, and National Performance Network Creation Award recipient, she is recognized for creating emotionally resonant works that bridge dance, theater, film, voice, and immersive performance. Named one of Dance Magazine's "25 to Watch," Yatkin has been praised by The New York Times for her "magical" presence and "fierce and supple" movement, while The Washington Post has recognized the emotional depth and theatrical power of her choreography.
Born in Berlin, Yatkin spent her early childhood in Anatolia before returning to Germany, where she completed her artistic training at Die Etage – College of Performing Arts. Her multicultural background continues to inform a choreographic practice that moves fluidly between cultures, histories, and artistic disciplines. Drawing from Graham, Horton, Limón, Ballet, German Dance Theater, Butoh, Middle Eastern dance, and somatic practices, she has developed a distinctive movement language that explores memory, transformation, mythology, identity, and our relationship to the natural world.
Throughout her career, Yatkin has created commissioned works for leading companies and institutions including Cleo Parker Robinson Dance Ensemble, Dallas Black Dance Theatre, The Washington Ballet, Modern American Dance Company, South Chicago Dance Theatre, Mandala Arts, River North Dance Chicago, and numerous universities and cultural organizations throughout the United States and abroad. Her choreography has been presented at venues including the Kennedy Center, Lincoln Center, Dance Place (Washington, DC), The Dance Complex (Boston), Links Hall, the Ruth Page Center for the Arts, and international festivals across Europe, Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East.
Alongside her commissioned work, Yatkin has sustained an internationally touring solo career for more than two decades. Her acclaimed solo works—including Echoes of Hope, What Dreams May Come, De/Reconstructing Mata Hari, The Other Witch, and Ouroboros—blend dance, theater, storytelling, live voice, and ritual into immersive experiences that invite audiences into profound acts of reflection and connection. Her current touring repertoire includes The Other Witch, Ouroboros, and Dancing Around the World, offering presenters a range of performance experiences spanning theater, site-specific practice, and interdisciplinary storytelling.
Yatkin is also the creator of Dancing Around the World, a global site-specific dance project that brought her to twenty countries, where she collaborated with local communities to create original choreographies in public spaces. The project resulted in a documentary and a series of short dance films celebrating movement as a universal language capable of connecting people across cultures, borders, and generations.
Since 2007, Yatkin has expanded her artistic practice into dance filmmaking. Her first major dance film, The Wall, created as part of The Berlin Wall Project, premiered at Dance Camera West. Subsequent films include the award-winning short documentary Dancing Around the World and Witches Cradle, inspired by Maya Deren's unfinished film of the same name. Her films have received numerous awards and official selections at dance-on-camera and film festivals internationally. She is also a frequent juror for Dance Camera West and other international dance film festivals, contributing to the continued growth and recognition of dance for the screen.
A passionate educator and mentor, Yatkin has served as Associate Professor at the University of Maryland and has taught master classes, residencies, and teacher trainings at Harvard University, the University of Notre Dame, Northwestern University, Webster University, Bates Dance Festival, and numerous institutions internationally. Through choreography, performance, filmmaking, teaching, and community engagement, she continues to create work that honors the wisdom of the body and invites audiences to imagine new ways of being together.

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