vexed

Seven Golden Birds share a secret, the keeping of which brings death to many. A jilted poet hatches a plot that will eventually unravel the most elusive of these secrets. The Sun God rules with a merciless iron fist and his only friend is the Magical Bird, an imposter who can be all things to all people. In this tale of ruthless information exchange, no human or imaginary bird is untouched by the influence of a brilliant but sadistic ruler who eventually finds freedom while the others meet their deaths. The narrative draws from ideas as old as the tales Rome stole from Greece. It is a meditation on the nature of power and the importance of information in any age.

This fast-moving story of sex, murder and vengeance combines the efforts of choreographer Christy Walsh and Danish painter Michael Chang.

During the first iteration as a multi-media dance-theater piece, the hour-long and action-packed narrative unfolded through Walsh’s ballet/flamenco – influenced choreography, martial arts, dialogue, and video. The amalgamation created a colorful but dangerous world steeped in historical reference and presented as a decorative fairy tale that describes an elaborate modern mythology.

Press Quotes:

Jasmina Wellinghoff of the San Antonio Express-News calls Walsh’s choreography:
“…imaginative, edgy and sprinkled with unusual effects and configurations” and the content of her dances as “realized in a novel way”.

Cath Alexandrine Danneskold-Samsoe says of Michael Chang:
“Like a Janus head hovering over the arch between the rationalism of the West and the intuitionism of the East.”