With so many examples of the State bearing down on the innocent, the conscience-driven, and the undefended, it’s no wonder that productions of Antigone are proliferating. But few give pride of place to dance, as Alan Lucien Øyen has done. Not that he ignores the script: ever since the Norwegian polymath assembled his Oslo troupe Winter Guests, two decades ago, he has worked closely with the same writer, Andrew Wale, to guarantee the words not be an afterthought, as often happens in dance. For Antigone, three voluble and indelible Pina Bausch veterans join Winter Guests. Øyen shares the late German master’s sumptuous and arresting visual imagination, yet, as befits the stark ethics of Sophocles, he is more serious in his concerns (if occasionally impudent in their delivery). Premiered in Rome in 2025, his 135-minute intermissionless Antigone makes the rounds this summer and fall. But it’s the production’s spell at the ancient amphitheater in Epidaurus this August, as part of the huge, annual Athens Epidaurus Festival, that promises to complete the work. The audience fans out like witnesses—or judges—around the nucleus of the stage, where Antigone makes her case and ends her life. —Apollinaire Scherr

The multidisciplinary Athens Epidaurus Festival offers an abundance of radical takes on the Greek classics, also presented in Epidaurus, two hours outside of Athens