Dance is often called a universal language because it can communicate what words cannot.
As Martha Graham once said, “The body says what words cannot.” Through movement, dancers express emotions, stories, and ideas while also reflecting the cultures, histories, beliefs, and social customs that shape them. Dance can also cross cultural boundaries, allowing audiences to connect with unfamiliar traditions in personal and immediate ways. Performed at NYU Skirball, BIRDY uses this power of movement to explore the tension between freedom and restriction in Taiwan.
BIRDY was brought to New York by the Taipei Cultural Center in New York, an organization established by Taiwan’s Ministry of Culture to build international connections through art and culture. By presenting the work at NYU Skirball, the center supported its mission of encouraging cultural exchange and collaboration.
The production was created by Hung Dance, a company founded by choreographer Lai Hung-Chung. Hung Dance is known for blending traditional and contemporary forms to create performances that speak to audiences around the world. Its work draws on practices such as Peking Opera and Tai Chi, then transforms them through modern dance. In BIRDY, this fusion allows the company to present dance as both a form of cultural expression and a powerful emotional language.
As choreographer, Lai Hung-Chung draws on Taiwan’s history and performance traditions to create a distinctive movement vocabulary. One of the most striking examples is his use of Ling Zi, the long pheasant feathers traditionally attached to the helmets of generals and warriors in Peking Opera. In BIRDY, the feathers extend the dancers’ bodies and intensify their movements. They shift from delicate ornaments into aggressive images, at times suggesting spears, whips, or even a blade drawn across a throat. This transformation gives the choreography both beauty and danger. Hung-Chung also uses long rattan staffs, which are connected to Tai Chi sparring practices. In one scene, the ensemble surrounds and confines a single dancer, using the staffs to trap and block the dancer. These images suggest the pressure of conformity and the loss of personal freedom. The score reinforces this tension by combining electronic music with classical Chinese sounds, creating a dialogue between tradition and modernity.
Throughout BIRDY, Hung-Chung uses sharp contrasts to deepen the work’s central themes. Darkness and light shift across the stage, directing the audience’s focus and changing the emotional atmosphere. A narrow beam may isolate one dancer before widening to reveal the full troupe, while sudden flashes of light interrupt the darkness. Sound and silence also shape the performance’s impact. After one dancer is trapped by rattan staffs, the stage falls silent. Then the light focuses on an opening, and a bundle of staffs crashes to the ground, signaling that the dancer has regained freedom. By moving between stillness and motion, silence and noise, isolation and unity, and divergence and conformity, the dancers make the struggle between individual freedom and collective pressure visible.
Before the performance, Lai Hung-Chung explained that BIRDY explores the relationship between freedom and collective action. He also said that he hoped the work would “speak to you in your own way.” Over the course of sixty minutes, the performance presents Taiwan’s history through a new dance language while inviting viewers to connect it to their own experiences, memories, and emotions. Through its fusion of traditional forms, contemporary movement, music, lighting, and symbolism, BIRDY becomes more than a dance performance. It becomes a reflection on the human desire for freedom and the forces that try to limit it.
