Presented by
Venue
Price:
$65.00 – Tier 1
$50.00 – Tier 2
$35.00 – Tier 3
Membership program discounts available.
Date and Time:
November 13, 2026 – 7:30 pm
Birdy is Hung Dance’s exhilarating call to the wild, where creatures of a feather move together and fracture apart. Featuring the Ling Zi headpiece, pheasant tail feathers from traditional Chinese opera symbolizing a warrior’s power, the work conjures a magpie-inspired vision, flashing moments of freedom against the cage of history. Drawing from martial arts, Peking opera, and cultural symbolism, the choreography transforms Taiwan’s political and historical complexity into a vivid contemporary dance language. Shifting from tenderness to ferocity, long feathers extend the body, at times weapon, at times whisper, while dancers flock, conform, and resist in a visceral meditation on identity, control, and the human desire for freedom.
Hung Dance website
Hung Dance Facebook
Hung Dance Instagram
Hung Dance (Taiwan)
Presented 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.
Added experience… theatre after dark!
Presented alongside the November 13 performance of Birdy, the Uncaged Soirée is a free public gathering that invites the community into an atmospheric celebration of movement, sound, flight, and transformation.
Post-Show • 8:30 to 10:30 pm
OTHER UPCOMING EVENTS
Birdy: Hung Dance (Taiwan)
