Sacred Flight and Fallen Creation in ‘Vulture/Eve’
- Elspeth Chan
- Oct 9
- 3 min read
Ching-Ying Chien’s double-bill performance, combining her 2018 solo Vulture with the newly created Eve, explores profound themes of life, death, and human essence through a powerful physicality and deeply symbolic narratives.
Vulture draws inspiration from a Tibetan myth about a vulture sensing its own end and flying into the sun to melt away, echoing the Greek myth of Icarus. The work is a reflection on uncontrollable life forces and human limitations, visually rendered through Chien’s body as it shifts between animalistic postures and human forms. The performance opens with Chien cradled in a dim spotlight, her seated figure with a reverse prayer pose reminiscent of a vulture touching down. This surreal stillness is amplified by reflections on the black stage floor. Her subtle, plucking finger movements imitate the playing of a Pipa with imaginary strings attached to her spine, awakening her body to rise upright.
Throughout the first half, Chien leaps with bent knees, moves her feet as if they are separate from her body. In a front split posture, she pulls her torso forward using her toes clenched around her braided hair, before drawing herself up with great determination. Her remarkable core strength blurs the boundaries between human and beast, reinforcing the metaphor of the vulture as sacred in Tibetan culture, where freedom and the cycle of life is symbolized in the sky burial ritual.
In the second half, the perspective shifts as Chien’s body faces upward with buzzing fly sounds, mirroring a corpse receiving the rites of the vultures. Here, the transition towards human form brings a contemplation on loss. Later, the guitarist adds vocalizations, and light washes her body in ethereal pale hues. Chien’s circular head swings create a mesmerizing loop, conjuring a photograph capturing ephemeral movement. The ritual culminates in Chien spinning along a circle; and in the standing split, her foot fiercely pulling up her braid, symbolizing strength and dignity. Ending with urban soundscape, which may come in a slight abruption, suggests the shared life cycle journey of primal existence and modern life. However, the reference to Icarus is left ambiguous.
Eve, co-created with Alessandro Ottaviani, reimagines the biblical creation myth, envisioning Adam and Eve reborn after civilisation’s collapse caused by technological undoing. It chronicles humanity's journey from primordial unity to complexity, exploring whether a technology-less humanity returns to simplicity.
The piece starts with both performers entering as a near-single entity enwrapped in shared cyber-style clothing, struggling to separate and explore individuality. Ottaviani’s subtle, break-dance-like isolations contrast with Chien’s cautious torch-lit exploration of the reflective foil landscape, resonating themes of discovery. As foil fragments become objects of control, the dancers portray humanity’s ambivalent relationship with creation and manipulation. Chien’s interaction with a square mirror: rotated, worn, and flickered, introduces the tension between attraction, seduction, and crisis. Although Chien initiates impressively appealing movements, the narrative ambiguously questions responsibility in temptation, complicating traditional gendered assumptions.
Technology enters materially as Ottaviani introduces a cable terminating with an apple, an allusion to temptation's icon. The interplay between performers and cable, accompanied by glitchy electric soundscape, mixes humor with a critique of technology's seductive, yet strangling influence. The final scenes depict playful aggression over apples: biting, squirting and the wrestling fight of performers throwing apples. It symbolizes the knowledge and desire turning rotten and contentious upon human civilizations. The closing moment, a birthday cake and off-key music, invites reflection on new beginnings born out of collapse and conflict.
Starting the evening with Vulture, an exploration of death through primal movement, then transitioning to Eve, which brings a humorous reflection on humanity’s origins and challenges, makes for a compelling journey. Personally, Vulture stands out for the sheer power of Chien’s physical storytelling, a pure and striking embodiment of life’s fragile cycle.
