TAIWANESE CONTEMPORARY DANCE

Creatures of a feather dance together in Birdy, Hung Dance’s call to the wild.

Employing a headpiece called “Ling Zi” that incorporates pheasant tail feathers worn in traditional Chinese opera to represent a warrior’s power and skill, Birdy offers up a magpie creation, concretizing bright bursts of freedom against the weighted cage of history.

Founded in 2017 by choreographer Lai Hung-Chung, Hung Dance’s choreographic vocabulary is drawn from martial arts, Peking opera, and traditional cultural symbols. Through the prism of performance, Taiwan’s complex history and political status metamorphose into a thrilling new dance language.

The calligraphic eloquence of four-foot-long feathers moves from gentleness to tension, evoking symbols of power, resistance, and release. Whether extending the body into space, wriggling in earnest writing, or offering a gossamer caress, the feathers function as a form of punctuation, leading and echoing movement phrases with the expressive vitality of living things.

As the dancers flock together in rippling patterns of conformity and divergence, rituals of behaviour gleaned from the non-human world find their choreographic counterparts. Groupthink meets the defiance of individual identity, as self-policing roots out any opposition. What emerges in the tightrope struggle is a universal cry for freedom.

“Birdy, a sublime choreography.” – Youness Bousenna, La Provence

“In Birdy, Lai Hung-Chung explores the limits of our desires and our sense of freedom.” – Jade Enaud, Zone Critique

“…Dancers, each adorned with a long pheasant feather, form tableaux expressing a longing for flight. And the magic of Birdy takes hold.” – Ariane Bavelier, Le Figaro