It all started when…

Eamon was cast in his first Broadway show at nine years old, Gypsy, starring Bernadette Peters. He went on to perform in four other Broadway productions before the age sixteen, which were Assassins, How The Grinch Stole Christmas, 13! The Musical, and Everyday Rapture. He then went to Princeton University to turn his focus towards direction and choreography, where he founded Grind Arts Company, which is now a thriving non-profit that produces his theater and film projects.

After college, Eamon began his professional career choreographing Tony Award winning director Michael Arden’s production of Merrily We Roll Along, and went on to choreograph numerous productions with Arden including Guys and Dolls in Tokyo, Annie at the Hollywood Bowl, and Alien/Nation at Williamstown Theater Festival. Eamon also choreographed for Tony Award winning director David Cromer on Next to Normal and Home, a dance film.

Other choreography credits include His Story directed by Jeff Calhoun, Ragtime in Tokyo, The Wedding Banquet in Taiwan directed by Gordon Greenberg, and Next to Normal at Barrington Stage Company directed by Alan Paul.

As director-choreographer, he’s done a re-imagined, contemporary ballet-infused Sunday in the Park with George at Axelrod Performing Arts Center, the aerial-dance, rock musical Hero, Christmas at the Southern Palace, Northpole-a-palooza, and Freakshow at Six Flags in Dallas, Sweeney Todd, Nine, and The Last Five Years with Grind Arts Company, along with a slew of dance films and music videos for which he has also been the cinematographer and editor.

Eamon’s most recent direction and choreographic endeavor was Sunday in the Park with George, produced by Axelrod Performing Arts Center. This re-imagined production brought George Suerat's inner world of color and light to the surface with contemporary ballet dancers on pointe representing the colors on George's palette, and cutting-edge lighting design reminiscent of an arena concert. The concept of dance and light brought the audience into George's mind and process, kinesthetically communicating his passion for creating art so that we can feel what he feels while in process and better empathize with his difficult choices. Footage from the production can be viewed above.

 “Finishing the Hat” is our proof-of-concept video for the production, directed, choreographed, and shot by Eamon Foley, and starring Graham Phillips as George, which can be viewed below.

Theatermania

“A fresh ‘Sunday in the Park With George’ brims with color and light. … Director Eamon Foley offers a fresh and captivating new vision of this work. …  The production succeeds because it embraces a wholly singular aesthetic. Foley’s ‘Sunday’ looks like no other staging I’ve ever seen.

BroadwayWorld

“A vibrant, beautifully staged production that enjoys splendid direction and choreography by Broadway veteran,  Eamon Foley. The bold reimagining of the show with its star-studded cast is enthralling from the first minute to the last.

Two River Times

“Spellbinding. …director/choreographer Eamon Foley and Sondheim’s theatrical precision is on full display. …It is a piece of art one believes Seurat and Sondheim would be proud of.”

HERO

Eamon is currently developing Hero, an aerial dance theater piece about a boy being drafted into the Vietnam war set to the music of MUSE. The experience is a kaleidoscopic journey through a soldier’s war trauma; a memory play in which aerial dance and rock music bring the fragmented pieces of his surreal experience to life. The story is conveyed as non-verbally as possible, letting the music, lyrics, and imagery viscerally communicate his experience. 

Above you can view footage from the workshop production, which was Eamon’s multi-award winning thesis at Princeton University.

The Daily Princetonian

“HERO is the best performance the University will see in the next decade - if not longer”

THE NUMBERS

Along with direction and choreography, Eamon is also a cinematographer and editor. He has shot and edited nearly all of his dance films, including his most recent, The Numbers, which is a meta-dance film about the process of getting into a studio with dancers and creating something beautiful together.

MICHAEL ARDEN COLLABORATIONS

Eamon has choreographed many productions with Tony Award winning director Michael Arden, including Guys and Dolls at the Imperial Theater in Tokyo, Annie at the Hollywood Bowl, Merrily We Roll Along and The Sondheim Immersive Experience at The Wallis Annenberg in Beverly Hills, and the immersive theatrical experiences Alien/Nation at Williamstown Theater Festival and American Dream Study by The Forest of Arden collective.

MUSIC VIDEOS

Brown Rice, directed and choreographed by Eamon explores gay loneliness in a body-obsessed culture, featuring the unique pop stylings of Natti Vogel. Warning: this music video involves explicit sensitive content.

Below is Bad Romance, starring Jay Armstrong Johnson, created for I Put a Spell On You benefitting BCEFA and The Ally Forney Center. Along with directing and choreographing this music video, Eamon also is the cinematographer and editor.

Dance + Sondheim + Film

The Sondheim Series

Eamon is endlessly inspired by Stephen Sondheim, and has explored his work through a choreographic and cinematographic lens. Along with Sunday in the Park with George, he would like to infuse other Sondheim musicals, such as Passion and A Little Night Music, with choreography in unexpected, specific ways that illuminate the rich subtext within his work.

Below is The Sondheim Series, which are dance films set to Sondheim classics created during the pandemic.