With light projected from behind, the paper screens are now ripe for shadow puppetry. Jiawen Feng materialises as a silhouette. With a pheasant’s long tail feather atop their crown, Feng plays with the supple plume. Feng curls the extension, and allows it to tickle the top of the frame, highlighting their confinement. In visual contrast to the upwards stroke, their long hair draws wriggly lines akin to ink on the page. Designed by Fengfeng Wang, the suggestion of the traditional costumes is beguiling. Feng slowly articulates the joints of their lower body, alluded to transparent garments. Feng’s barefoot momentarily breaks free, revealing the human form responsible for the silhouette, hinting at what might follow.

In the second hungry section of glowing light, “waiting to see what might come to fill the vacancy,”[2] the form of choreographer Cui comes into view. Atop her crown, by contrast, a floral headdress makes a sphere of soft curves. Cui toys with making herself grow impossibly tall within the confines of the screen before reducing her silhouette to diminutive, all by proximity to light. The hypnotic effect of changing scale and focus reminds me of a magic lantern, as if someone has moved the focusing tube in and out. In the manner of a magic lantern, the further the form is from the screen “the larger but less distinct the images will appear. The closer, the smaller, the sharper.”[3] Cui’s presence remains, even in her absence, when coupled with flickering sound design by Monica Lim and Kai Luan. A dream state of weightlessness ensues, even when faced with a flurry of late comers admitted to the theatre. As a knot of figures hustle to find spare seats, unbeknownst to them, their profiles momentarily become an extension of the scene.