Presented by Dance House Vancouver with community partner Asian-Canadian Special Events Association

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

Employing a head piece called “Ling Zi” that incorporates pheasant tail feathers worn in traditional Chinese opera to represent 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 metamorphize into a thrilling new dance language.

The calligraphic eloquence of four-feet long feathers moves from gentleness to violence, transforming into spears, whips, and a blade drawn sharply across the throat. 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. Group think 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.