In no time, she plucks the feather from her head, carries it downstage, and uses it like a quill—scribbling energetically in space. Her body reverberates with the quill’s movements. The momentary creative freedom is short-lived as more dancers arrive, feather in hand, to scrawl and etch on her back, legs, sides, and arms as their canvas. The bodily invasion continues as the group pokes, prods, grabs, and even bites at their captive. After the individual extricates herself and finds another location, the others claim her body again as they pile their feathers atop her open arms. She submits to their will and performs a long, slow leg extension waiting for them to reclaim their props and continue the dance. Even when she is finally alone again onstage, the group is still on the attack. Volleys of flying feathers arc through the air landing like arrows and fell the single dancer. 

With striking visual metaphors “Birdy” creates enthralling theater. Rattan poles, when held together with ends touching, appear to be a connecting (or confining) enclosure. When separated, they are manipulated into the shifting bars of a menacing cage imprisoning an individual, then a revolving hamster wheel that one must run through. Finally the poles become spears for a thrilling combat sequence, taking a page from Chinese Opera movement—training that they all receive in the university dance curriculum. A virtuoso fight scene between two men comes to a poignant ending as the two opponents remain separated by the fighting stick braced between their chests, though they reach toward each other straining impossibly for their hands to touch. When another dancer walks up and pulls the stick free, it lands with a thud, and the two men fall into each other.   

The dancers, dressed in Taiwanese costume designer Summer Lin’s chic, slate-colored, form-fitting outfits, look like they stepped off the Starship Enterprise ready for action as they group and regroup into mesmerizing montages. They exude super-human energy as they proceed through these challenging tableaux using a movement vocabulary that incorporates the momentum-generated, spiraling circularity we have come to know from Shen Wei’s works contrasted with jagged, detached, brittle displays of emotional discomfort. Topping it off is an athletic physicality borne of Kung fu and hip hop!