A lone figure drifts through dim light in a dark space. Her arms undulate slowly. Another appendage -- a pheasant tail feather as long as the dancer is tall -- floats upward from the bun atop her head ...

In Taiwanese choreographer Lai Hung-chung’s Birdy, the dancers wear 4-foot-long pheasant feathers on their heads. The effect, according to a review in the Vancouver online magazine Stir, is sculptural ...