“After the Birds” is an international theater project created in collaboration between Chorea Theatre Company and Earthfall Dance Theatre (Cardiff, Wales, UK) in September 2005 in Cardiff.
The Polish premiere of “After the Birds” is, after “Hode Galatan”, the second part of the triptych realized together by Chorea and Earthfall. Both groups, using completely different aesthetics and methods of work, created together a new language on the border of genres and styles. Chorea and Earthfall confront ancient Greek choral song with contemporary music and urban space choreography. The performance is based on themes taken from Aristophanes’ comedy “The Birds” radically juxtaposed with the anxieties of today’s world, expressed in a modern form of movement and song. For Athens, Aristophanes’ period is a time of devastating wars with Sparta, disintegrating democracy, political crises and power struggles, crumbling social and religious values. In such circumstances, there are always guides to a wonderful new world to be created on the ruins of the old one.
With populist slogans and manipulations, they position themselves precisely between those who have succeeded and those who are losers. One cannot live without the other, so in the place where their paths intersect, the former must be deprived of their power and the latter their dreams. Surround the whole place with a wall, set up guards, issue passes and don’t let strangers in. But from behind a high wall, gods look like corrupted idiots and people like dwarves robbed of their dreams…