Is this the way a movement begins?
Dogs Eat Wind brings a breath of fresh cross disciplinary multimedia and lavish to Nashville
On Saturday, February 28th, Galería Paloma in East Nashville’s Gallatin Pike became activated in a peculiar way. The pristinely curated vintage furniture studio which extends to a vintage clothing store and a coffee shop called Earl Caffe became the playground for an immersive multimedia performance and the screening of the latest work by the internationally collaborative performance collective Dogs Eat Wind (DEW).
Dogs Eat Wind is an artist-led collective of four performance artists focused on contemporary dance currently based in Nashville, TN and Rome, Italy. The transatlantic collective met during a contemporary dance class in 2023 in Italy and have wavered their collaborative practice between Italy and the U.S. ever since. I spoke to the Italian artists, Milena Borgonovo and Deborah Congedo who were very excited to have landed back in Nashville, following their booming dance performance help up, help down, which premiered at Centennial Performing Arts Studios a year ago, followed by its showcase during the Kindling Arts Festival, a tour in Bulgaria, and multiple avenues in Italy.
The synergy between the four performers, including the Nashville based Hayden Hubner and Hannah McCarthy is what has initiated the formation of the ensemble which includes a few other members and many supporters. For a moment, this reminded me of how the supergroup Crosby, Stills & Nash (CSN) was brought together in 1968, when the intricate, three-part vocal harmonies, diverse songwriting styles, and a shared acoustic-based, folk-rock sound defined the Laurel Canyon era.
DEW’s artistic philosophy is centered around specific and shared experiences that inspire the creation of new worlds on stage using personal artifacts, experiences, histories, memories, dreams, and sound archives. They are currently investigating the question of relationships in the context of space and place, themes that come across in their performance and short film as well.
The evening was an amalgamate of an immersive live performance which extended to a discrete wall screening at the corner of the ceiling of the vintage store area of the gallery, posh cocktails and curated charcuterie including a tray of cigarettes, a silent auction and finally the outdoor premiere of Le Prove, co-directed between Sophia Matinazad, a creative director, stylist, and photographer based out of New York City and collective members Hayden Hubner and Hannah McCarthy. The evening served as a fundraiser for Dog Eat Wind’s 2026 performance season, helping sustain the collective’s continued creation of interdisciplinary work and international artistic exchange.
This entertaining and highly curated event speaks of a detail-oriented group of people, focused on top notch promotion and artistic quality. Although only existent since 2023, the collective already has a niche website, a logo, merchandise and promoted Le Prove through a press release, event flyer and a video trailer. This speaks of a promising and serious collective whose appearance in the world matters to it deeply.
As claimed in their press release, collaboration seems to stand at DEW’s core values. For their event in Nashville, they collaborated with Galería Paloma, Earl Caffe, had many sponsors including the mothers of the performers, and finally yet significantly, the famous Nashville tuba guy who was featured in the short film, all joining forces to choreograph a visually compelling evening that had the audience experience at the heart of its intentions.
The performance section was structured in two blocks; the first had already started when the audience arrived, with the four dancers in red tulles, dispersed, blending into the physical space of the furniture store, accompanied by a surreal Lynchian moody dream pop and noir-jazz. The four women seemed encaptivated in their own world, resonating a childish, pure, and naïve frame of mind, moving at their own pace, sometimes in pairs, making no eye contact with the audience. This stance shifts in the second part, when after they’ve changed into leopard and denim outfits, their dances are more coordinated, less theatrical, and more interactive. The repetitive body movements are accompanied by texts that suggest questions on what an audience is, what choreography is, and what a body is, in relation to others.
While the interdisciplinary performance is immersive, interactive between the space and the dancers, it barely touches the territory of participation through gaze, but not any other form of interaction, aside from when the dancers were taking breaks and were mingling instead of performing, however, I wondered if those interactions could in fact be considered as parts of the performance.
The centerpiece of the event was the premiere of the collective’s first short film, Le Prove, which in Italian means the rehearsals, starring all the performers mentioned above who were present at the event. The film continues to abide to the surreal and avant-garde posture, and with its bright colors, symmetry, and emphasis on objects, shot by cinematographer Mika Matinazad, it recalls sentiments from Wes Anderson’s movies. The film revolves around the rehearsals of the collective in a bourgeois house, only to be lured by the tuba guy who roams outside of their windows, and interrupted by the two obscure visitors, played by Korby Lenker, and Hudson McNeese, who try to convince the dancers to make a purchase and embark onto a world which “is in the eye of the cosmic tornado, as we speak”. The film captures DEW’s signature blend of movement, narrative, and collaborative experimentation, presenting the creative process itself as a layered artistic experience.
“This film reflects not only what artists of all ages and various genres are capable of creating together, but also the vital role artists play in building international creative dialogue,” said co-director Hannah McCarthy. “We’re interested in what happens when artists from different places collide, experiment, and build something new that doesn’t belong to one culture or discipline.”
Dog Eat Wind gathered a vast and diverse crowd in their event; individuals who are prone to cross disciplinary events, supporters of the collective and their initiative and those who savor lavish and high-end settings.
For more information about Dogs Eat Wind and their upcoming programming, visit: www.dogseatwind.com
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Fjolla Hoxha is a writer, theater & drama critic, and performance maker from Prizren/Kosova, newly based in Nashville. Her artistic practice is rooted on assiduous research that grounds on critical theory, cultural studies, oral histories and narratives, institutional and personal archives. Aside from being a writer, Fjolla works as a cross-media performance artist, focused on site-specificity and audience participation. She has collaborated with various artists, collectives and institutions based in Europe and the U.S. and her work has been staged and stage-read in Kosova, Finland, Switzerland, Germany, UK while her plays and reviews have also been published in Greece and New York.
