The Streets are Full of Dead Birds; or, As Before
Easton Nguyen (Austria)
25.07 | 22:30 | Mikis Theodorakis theatre
Tickets: 17€ regular – 14€ student, unemployed | For all performances of the evening
Easton Nguyen is an international contemporary choreographer and dancer currently based between New York and Austria. Originally from Virginia, she then attended the Ailey School/Fordham University for her BFA and after participated in the International Choreographic Exchange at the Salzburg Experimental Academy of Dance (SEAD), later becoming their Artist in Residence, and her works illustrate this diverse background, both in the arts and culture. After joining the Governor’s School for the Arts in Norfolk, Virginia at fourteen, Easton was surrounded by departments of all different visual and performing arts sectors, creating the basis of her interdisciplinary work and its importance in her process, most directly seen by her collaborations with artist Georgia Dahill-Fuchel (Beats per Movement) on the music of her works. Having participated and studied in many different areas of dance, starting with American competition dance and moving to include classic modern techniques such as Horton and Graham and more concept-based and experimental understandings of dance that are more prominent throughout Central Europe, Easton’s works encompass the vast background that she has experienced, pulling inspiration from each force to culminate in the multiplicity of her own works. While Easton’s background in strong, codified techniques can be seen throughout her movement, she also reacts to contrast this with very subtle details and gestures, and pairs it with a strong focus on the conceptual aspects of her works along with the knowledge of the audience at all times. Easton has most recently premiered work at the New Faces New Dances Festival in Salzburg in 2025 and 2024 and in the Because The Night Festival in 2024, and will tour this work to the Dance Days Chania Festival this coming summer. She has also previously presented her works at the City Dance Festival in Washington DC, along with throughout festivals in New York, including the Young Choreographer’s Festival at Symphony Space and the Craft NYC. As a dancer, she has performed works by Martha Graham, Ethan Colangelo, Rafael Cañals, José Limón, Brice Mousset, and many more.
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This work is a 25-minute contemporary dance piece with five dancers, entitled The Streets Are Full of Dead Birds; or, As Before, that explores the presence of meaning in art, and what happens if we attempt to erase almost all of it through the restrictions put on the process. Specifically, it addresses these ideas through inspiration and utilization of the theatre of the absurd, with the entire work created by stage directions from plays by Ionesco and Beckett and influence from the tenets of these works. By restricting the process to only allow the work to be created by direct use of these stage directions, the piece takes out the questions of why: why are we doing this, what does it mean, and how does it help portray the concept? Instead, the only questions are what stage direction created this section and is it obvious when the two are put side by side? By doing this, the process was no longer burdened by the constant presence of meaning, instead allowing the creation to thrive through its restrictions, creating a work that in itself does not hold its own meaning, but leaves immense space to those watching to find their own. In the current space where new dance works are expected to affect society by constantly addressing all of the prominent political and social issues that inhabit our lives, this work strips these expectations away, bringing back the idea of art for the simple purpose of creation, and seeing what is made from the process.
Choreography: Easton Nguyen
Performers: Carmen Antoniou Echenique, Sophia Descamps, Lora Ensing, Louise Gourdel, Kim Mi Yeon
Music: Georgia Dahill-Fuchel (Beats per Movement)
Text: Samuel Beckett, Eugène Ionesco
Supported by the Austrian Embassy in Athens.
25 July | 22:30 | Mikis Theodorakis theatre
Easton Nguyen – The Streets are Full of Dead Birds; or, As Before
