Bret Easterling, Julia Eichten, and Emi Ferguson have been creating discipline-colliding work through collaborative ensembles for almost two decades. Since first meeting as students at The Juilliard School, they have developed a practice that dissolves the boundaries between music and movement. With this extensive working practice as a foundation, this is the first time they come together as a trio to embark on a new artistic project.

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Their past projects have been presented by Lincoln Center, the Ojai Music Festival, Little Island, Hauser & Wirth, WQXR, and in collaboration with artists such as Solange Knowles, Kesha, Anthony Roth Costanzo, and Pierre Boulez, always with an eye toward reimagining how audiences encounter performance.

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As individual artists, they’ve been the recipients of the Avery Fisher Career Grant and the Zaraspe Prize, have held faculty positions at The Juilliard School, the University of Southern California, and Cal Arts, and experienced overlapping membership in leading companies including Los Angeles Dance Project, Batsheva Dance Company, and the American Modern Opera Company (AMOC), of which Ferguson and Eichten are founding members. Together, Bret and Julia founded BEMOVING, a nonprofit organization led by LGBTQ+ dance makers and educators that fosters communal and nurturing environments for the research, development, and dissemination of dance works and movement practices. Their choreographic partnership, EICHTERLING, has been described as “a joyous, frolicking pas de deux of love, extinction, and human evolution — Charles Darwin meets Fantasia,” (SF Chronicle). 

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When joined with Emi’s musical and spoken word practice, the trio crafts performances that inhabit a unique space. They invite audiences to experience music as movement resonating audibly in the body. Together they are rigorous and playful, always building new rituals of performance that speak to imagination, curiosity, and humanity.

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BRET EASTERLING is a multidisciplinary artist, director, and educator creating performance, film, and community-based projects that use movement as a tool for connection, inquiry, and collective experience. He received his BFA and the Hector Zaraspe Prize for Choreography from The Juilliard School, and became a formative member of Gallim Dance and a prominent performer and creative contributor with Ohad Naharin’s internationally renowned Batsheva Dance Company.

 

Easterling has created and presented work across live performance, film, and interdisciplinary platforms at institutions including Jacob’s Pillow, Lincoln Center, REDCAT, 92NY, Opera Philadelphia, LA Dance Project, AMOC* (American Modern Opera Company), Whim W’Him, Backhausdance, b12, Dance on Camera Festival, and Hauser & Wirth. His collaborative practice includes projects with Anthony Roth Costanzo, Kesha, Ai Bendr, Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs, and Jurassic Spine. He also maintains an artistic partnership with Julia Eichten as EICHTERLING, spanning choreography, curation, film, and fashion.

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As Founder and Artistic Director of the LGBTQ+ nonprofit BEMOVING, Easterling builds infrastructure supporting the creation, presentation, and sustainability of dance. He is on faculty at the USC Glorya Kaufman School of Dance, co-director of Ghost Light Residency, co-founder of PAY DANCERS, and an Ilan Lev Method practitioner, grounding his work in care for artists. 

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JULIA EICHTEN works between Opera, Theater and Dance as a Director, Choreographer, Educator and Performer. They received their BFA and the Hector Zaraspe Prize for Choreography from The Juilliard School, were a founding member of L.A. Dance Project and are a current member of AMOC* (American Modern Opera Company.) Their work has been shown at the Joyce Theater, Baryshnikov Arts Center (NYC), L.A. Dance Project, The Gardens of Versailles and LUMA in Arles, FR. Last year, Eichten performed in Joan Jonas’ iconic Mirror Piece I & II at The Getty Museum, which inspired hat company, PAY DANCERS. Most Recently, Eichten had their Lincoln Center premiere, with a duet by EICHTERLING (Bret Easterling + Eichten) Dance in the Park. Rome is Falling, a new opera composed by Doug Balliet with Direction by Eichten also premiered at RUN AMOC* Festival as a part of Summer in the City at Lincoln Center. 

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EMI FERGUSON is the founder and director of Exquisite Corpse, an ensemble dedicated to music that resists easy categorization. Emi is a 2023 recipient of the Avery Fisher Career Grant and can be heard live in concerts and festivals with groups including the Handel and Haydn Society, AMOC*, Ruckus, the New York New Music Ensemble, the Manhattan Chamber Players, and as the music director of Camerata Pacifica Baroque. Her recordings By George!, Amour Cruel, and Fly the Coop: Bach Sonatas and Preludes, celebrate her fascination with reinvigorating music and instruments of the past for the present. Ferguson is the founder of interdisciplinary ensemble Exquisite Corpse, and has spoken and performed at TEDx events and has been featured on the Discovery Channel, Amazon Prime, WQXR, and Vox talking about how music relates to our world today. As part of WQXR’s Artist Propulsion Lab, she created the series This Composer is SICK! exploring the impact of Syphilis on classical composers. She is also a host of WQXR’s Young Artists Showcase and Once Upon A Composer and her book for music lovers of all ages, Iconic Composers was released in 2023. Born in Japan and raised in London and Boston, she now resides in New York.

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