Hillel Kogan is a choreogrpaher, dancer, dramaturge, and teacher, creating works since 1996. For nine years, from 1996 to 2005, Kogan focused on short creations and was commissioned to create works for the National Ballet of Portugal , Muza Dance Company, for the Shades of Dance Festival at the Suzanne Dellal Center and others. In 2009, he was invited to join the Israeli Choreographers’ Association. He has participated in the Israeli Ministry of Culture flagship event the Curtain Up Festival multiple times. As part of this platform, Kogan presented Taki Take One ( together with Yossi Berg and Inbal Yaacobi, 2006), After the Bolero (2007), Everything ( 2009) and Obscene Gesture (2011).
Kogan’s repertoire includes the eveninglength works The Rite of Spring (2011) and We Love Arabs (2013), which were created as commissions for Tmuna Theater’s Intimadance Festival. We Love Arabs received various prizes and acknowledgement in Israel and abroad. This work continues to be erformed in Israel and abroad including engagements in New York, Portland, Paris, Munich, Melbourne, Rome, Zurich, Brussels and more. We Love Arabs is performed in four versions: Hebrew, English, French and Spanish. In 2017 he created “The Swan and the Pimp” that was performed in Israel and France, and in 2018 he crated “Stars and Dust”, for the dancers of the Ballet du Capitole, Toulouse, France, in co-production with the Montpellier Dance Festival. He is the recipient of the Israel National Lottery’s 2015 Landau Prize, The Israel Critics’ Circle’s Outstanding Choreographer of 2013, and was named as a Promising Choreographer by European magazine Tanz in 1999 and 2014. For his choreographies, Kogan received the Yair Shapira Prize in 2010 and the Teva Prize in dance in 2009.
In 2015, Kogan was appointed as coartistic director of the Curtain Up Festival. Kogan graduated from Thelma Yelin High School for the Arts’ Theater Department. His dance studies continued at The Bat Dor Dance Studio and the Merce Cunningham Studio in New York City (thanks to a generous grant from the America Israel Cultural Foundation). He performed as a member of the youth company Bikurei Machol (1990), The Batsheva Ensemble (1995-6), Nomades Dance Company of Switzerland (1996-8) and the Gulbenkian Ballet of Portugal (1999-2005). As part of the Israeli dance scene, Kogan has worked as a dancer, choreographer, collaborator and dramaturge with Renana Raz, Dana Ruttenberg, Yossi Berg and Oded Graf and others. Kogan has performed as a guest with Batsheva Dance Company. In 2005, Kogan received an invitation to work as Assistant Choreographer to Ohad Naharin. In this role, Kogan has worked as rehearsal director with the Batsheva Ensemble untill summer 2016, as well as with various foreign troupes. In parallel to this position, Kogan has been an active member of the Israeli and international dance communities as an independent choreographer. In Batsheva Dance Company, Kogan is Director of Educational Programs and Artistic Director of “Batsheva Hosts” performances series.
Kogan teaches Gaga, repertoire (his own and other’s) and contemporary dance. He has taught at companies such as Norway’s Carte Blanche, Gauthier Dance in Germany, IT Danza in Spain, Srtut in Australia, and more. Kogan also teaches dance to undergraduate students of the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance. Hillel Kogan writes articles on dance, which have been published in the online magazine Maakaf and in the quarterly magazine Machol Achshav.
