| "Wings"
of inspiration by Josie Roberts, The Alexandria Journal
Looking at her from across the room, you can tell instantly that Nejla Y. Yatkin is a dancer. With an explosion of jet black hair on top of her head, her lean yet chiseled figure towered above the rest of the patrons at a downtown coffeehouse. She glided over to a table, sunk into a chair and crossed her mile-long legs in a motion so confident, you would think she choreographed every nuance. "I feel alive when I dance," Yatkin said. "Every time I perform, I learn more about the dance, the audience, myself." A red-studded nose piercing caught the light as she turned to watch a passer-by. "It’s a different experience every time." On Saturday night, Yatkin will take the stage at Washington’s Dance Place for a solo performance - showcasing two pieces of her own choreography and one by Donald McKayle - entitled "Wings of Desire." Inspired by a German film of the same name, Yatkin hopes her pieces translate the original story of an angel who wishes to come to life. The performance is about "the intensity of being, tasting life, having a sense of color and feeling - not just being an angel forever," Yatkin said emphasizing that people must discover the human experience. "You must live your life now," she said, narrowing her huge brown eyes as she tried to explain the meaning of her work in words, rather than her most familiar tongue - movement. "You have to make the best of this life and not just go on to the next." Yatkin’s "For People With Wings" opens the evening and shows moments of reflection, longing and choice. McKayle’s "Angelitos Negros" follows, and the performance culminates with a debut of Yatkin’s "Echoes of Hope for Those Still on the Ground," a summation of her message to celebrate humanity rather than always trying to transcend it. Most of the music in "Wings of Desire" comes from the movie that inspired the choreography. There are insertions of silence as well as text, including the fragmented reading of a poem that carries throughout the movies. A voice whispers the English translation under the German reading during pauses between pieces. Yatkin acknowledged that people off the street may find her work abstract in the same way they would find a modern painting of a blank canvas abstract. With study though, one can learn to comprehend the art. Yet the individual experience outweighs any technical understanding, and she said she cannot predict what the audience will walk away with. "When you look at a painting, everybody takes something different away. It is the same with dance." Still, Yatkin hopes that people who come to her solo performance will be "inspired for life" for the next day, for transformation." As a youth, Yatkin started dancing after an inspiring performance she saw at a family wedding, but her parents originally discouraged her from pursuing dance. "My parents wanted me to be a doctor. They said, ‘Dance has no future,’" Yatkin said, resting her chin on the heel of her hand and smirking, possibly thinking of how dance now dominates her whole life. She told how her first dance instruction in Turkish folk dance was a compromise that satisfied her desire to dance while preserving part of her heritage. "Yatkin, of Turkish and Egyptian ancestry, grew up in Berlin and yearned to explore her diverse roots. She found dance to be a link between them all, a universe language that transcended verbal communication. "Being from so many cultures and growing up around three different languages, it was sometimes hard to express myself on way," she said, brushing her wild black hair behind her ear. "It was always easy for me to express myself through movement." By the age of 14, Yatkin had been accepted into a junior company, and found the mixture of dancers in the Berlin company to be as diverse as herself. "There were so many cultures in one class, but we understood each other without words," she said. Yatkin continued her dance exploration, branching out to many forms such as ballet, jazz, pantomime and finally discovering her love of the modern genre. "Ballet is too sweet. I didn’t want princes or fairies. I wanted..Yatkin paused, puffed out her cheeks and spit, "power". Yatkin’s powerful execution on stage has earned her acclaim around the world. In Italy, at the Music World 2000 festival, she won first place in the Best Female Modern Solo Dance category. She has performed as a soloist at several festivals in Russia as well as teaching workshops on contemporary dance, where they invite her back again and again. She’s traveled to Africa and Japan, and most recently, she was chosen to set a piece for the Cleo Parker Robinson Dance Ensemble, which will be performed at New York’s Lincoln Center in August. "I want to contribute to the history that came before me and give the people after me something to work with," Yatkin said. As she stood to leave, she seemed to grow out of her seat, already preparing mentally for the next day’s rehearsals and finding inspirations in the subtle movements around her. After five years in America, learning a new culture and new language, she concluded, "We may not all speak the same language, but we are connected." |