What people say about Ellen Kogan as a dance artist:

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“An alive, untyped, fascinating, diversified artist we can be proud and delighted to have in our midst.”

Bessie Schoenberg, NYC

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“Her high skill, unsuspected strength, her charm, wit, humor and warmth make her an engaging performer…She is an extremely sensitive artist who savors the attack of exploring the finest shades of meaning.   

Bessie Schoenberg, NYC

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"...something of a chameleon, Kogan makes her body look completely different as she performs the ecstatic whirls that Dora Hoyer was famed for … dances as if a motor in the center of her body were goading her into motion. It is an impressive achievement."

Deborah Jowitt, The Village Voice

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“A consummate artist who brings a professional intensity to everything she does; when she dances the motivation and intent are clear as crystal."

Kitty Cunningham - Schenectady Gazette

 

“An almost urgent sense of communication that has been lost for the most part in the aftermath of ‘the dance boom’. The conviction was there, however, in Ellen Kogan’s sensitive performance of Somewhere Between Hours, an abstract movement study of thwarted impulse.”

Jennifer Dunning – The New York Times

 

“She is a Jill of many styles and a mistress of them all ….she dances through the extensive vocabulary of movement culled from many sources…She also has humor and a zest for dancing which shine out in performance.”

Mary Brennan – Glasgow Herald, Scotland

 

“Kogan is a dancer who projects great charm, warmth and intelligence.”

Deborah Jowitt – The Village Voice

 

“Blue Grotto was itself worth the price of admission. Much of the credit for that goes to the really extraordinary dancing and engaging presence of Ellen Kogan.”

                Noel Sutter – Schenectady Gazette

 

“Kogan holds the stage with her fine grace. Her movement have such a delicate balance and timing it is as if a Swiss watch had suddenly come to life”

Kitty Cunningham – Schenectady Gazette

 

“A Skilled, attractive and versatile soloist – Kogan did handsomely by the six choreographers, bringing charm and understanding to each in turn”

John Percival – The Times, London

 

“Full of sly bits performed by Miss Kogan with just the right balance of shrewdness and innocent grace.  Blue Grotto was inspired nonsense.”

Jennifer Dunning - The New York Times

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“After a varied career on both coasts of America and Israel, Ellen Kogan has had the wit to compile a really varied program for her solo evening, seven dances, seven different choreographers.”

John Percival – The Times, London

 

“Inspired…”

The New York Times

 

“Triumphant”

Ballet News

 

“A Soloist of warmth and distinction.”

The Stage, London

 

“Ellen Kogan performed with a delicate sensibility…and made each movement count.”

Dance News

 

“Ellen Kogan, a dancer of formidable technique – each work she has performed bears the Kogan stamp.”

Kelly Christman – The Morning Sun

 

“…gossamer lyricism…With the grace of a moth, Ms. Kogan floats above the tempo complexity, perfectly expressing the mood of this music.”

Berkshire Eagle

 

“Tristeza, a solo created by Heinz Poll and inspired by the late Dore Hoyer…Kogan makes her body look completely different too, as she performs the ecstatic whirls that Hoyer was famed for, lifts leg high to the side without turnout, let’s a foot stretch unpointed, dances as if a motor in the center of her body were goading her into motion. It’s an impressive achievement.”

Village Voice

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"Tristeza - Eloquently conceived and performed."

Jack Anderson, The New York Times

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“Ms. Kogan is an artist/educator of the highest stature…. recognized in the dance field as a superb performer and teacher ……unparalleled interpreter of the works of the early modern dance pioneers.”

Her deep interest in human movement, as it relates to culture, has guided her research to create works that are not only eloquent dance, but scholarly discourse as well.”

Clay Taliaferro, Dance artist and professor of practice, Duke Dance Program

 

“Ms. Kogan is a technically superb dancer with a range of expression from the comic to the profoundly serious…. a clear demonstration of the variety of styles possible to a dancer.”

James Penrod, Former Chair, Dance Department, University of California, Irvine

 

“Ms. Kogan is a fine performer with an outstanding gift for finely delineated interpretation of another artist’s creation.”

Bonnie Bird, former Head Dance Theatre Department, Laban Centre For Movement and Dance, University of London Goldsmiths College, London

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"In Ms. Kogan, he (Heinz Poll) has found a dancer whose expressive depth and technical gifts convey the work's fine points to splendid effect."

Donald Rosenberg, Beacon Journal

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" ..a flow from grief to joy in Ellen Kogan's compelling performance of

Hadassah's 1947 Shuvi Nafshi."

Jennifer Dunning, The New York Times

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"Translated by Ms. Kogan, it ("Tristeza") is a sustained outpouring of energy in which extremes of feeling become subtle gradations , and motion is both pain and cure."

Allison Tracy, The Berkshire Eagle

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"Sometimes guest artists on a dance program can provide delectable icing on an already choreographic cake...Ellen Kogan, a modern dancer who specializes in solos...brought sophistication to the evening. Both pieces (Steeple Rag by James Waring and S'Wonderful by Annabelle Gamson) were charming trifles and Ms. Kogan danced jauntily."

The New York Times.

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"New to me were Ellen Kogan's wonderfully sensitive interpretations of St. Denis's Waltz and Liebestraum, staged by Jane Sherman, and Sheila Xoregos's Fuller tribute, La Loie. It was thrilling to see a vision of Fuller in her little heeled shoes, swirling yards of silk to make herself appear now a lily, now a Winged Victory breasting the gale." 

Deborah Jowitt, The Village Voice.

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“Here is a technical dancer who fires her craft with dramatic intensity. She is a performer who never for a moment stops feeling what she is doing. It is because her own involvement in the dances is so deep and strong that the audience quickly becomes involved …the spectrum of energy was like an array of colors, a testimony to Kogan’s skills as a consummate performer.”

Lois Welk, Artistic Director, American Dance Asylum

 

“has a wonderful open way of dancing -very clear and delicately emphatic.”

Deborah Jowitt, The Village Voice

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