Concept:

Quills is a choreographic exploration that uses traditional Chinese opera quills as extensions of the dancer's elbows, focusing on the relationship between the torso and the quills under the restricted movement of the forearms. Through this limitation, the work investigates the aesthetic and physical qualities of the quills—delicate yet forceful, ornamental yet wild—transforming the dancer’s body into evocative, shape-shifting forms reminiscent of animals and insects.  

Drawing from ancient Chinese philosophy, particularly the Taoist notion that “Heaven and earth and I were born at the same time, and the ten thousand things and I are one” (from the Book of Zhuangzi, Chapter 2: Qi Wu Lun-Discussion on Making All Things Equal, by Zhuangzi during Warring States Period, approximately 4th century BCE), the piece blurs the distinctions between human and nonhuman, artifice and nature, identity and instinct. The near-nude body emphasizes the contrast between skin and feather, civilization and the elemental, inviting a return to an embodied sense of wildness—at once mythical, vulnerable, and untamed. 

Quills is not merely a dance, but a meditation on unity, transformation, and the animalistic spirit that moves beneath the surface of the self.