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Boston Globe

‘Conference of the Birds' aims high, but struggles in flight

Context is aided by projection designer David Bengali and calligraphic artist Pouya Jahan's eye-popping visuals panning across three screens; most vivid are the feathery white shapes that coalesce and dissolve, a galaxy of stars becoming birds streaking across the sky. The multilevel set of platforms and scaffolds allows the dancers to animate the stage in many directions at once, perching one moment, falling into waiting arms another. The episodic musical score (by Shaw Pong Liu, Sandy Singh, and Shaho Andalibi) is a kind of rambling, kaleidoscopic sound collage that reinforces the international embrace, reflecting an array of musical sources and influences. Advertisement But while ambitious and heartfelt, 'Conference of the Birds' is ultimately too fractured and busy, a lot of running without going anywhere and it seldom settles enough to let us really appreciate details and small moments, to process what we're seeing. Who are these characters, and what exactly might be going on? (The dim lighting throughout doesn't help.) Though the printed program expansively delineates the story and the seven valleys through which the characters trek (the Valley of Insight into Mystery, the Valley of Bewilderment, etc.) it's not a cohesive narrative arc that viewers can easily follow in the dance, and when we lose that thread, the work becomes murky. The journey feels wearing, too slow-moving, too much of the same. There is precious little momentum or rhythmic drive. Advertisement The work's most literal section deals with immigration and degradation. A line of dancers form a wall over which one brave soul tries repeatedly to climb. Another confronts a line of marchers, none of whom respond to her wordless pleas. A circle forms, trapping someone inside. A couple is unceremoniously pulled apart, like a parent separated from a child. Gradually, one by one, dancers begin removing bits of clothing before falling lifelessly to the floor. One retches grotesquely for far too long. We get it. But as the dancers rouse, they gradually find connection and commonality with one another. Seated across the stage, legs entwined, they bow and stretch, arms reaching forward and back, up in supplication, into the chest in reverence. By the end, they are birds again, flocking calmly, breathing into suspensions as if to hold the air. And the final vignette packs a punch. The nine dancers come together as one, their multiple outstretched arms gracefully flowing together as the wings of a single powerful bird. ANIKAYA DANCE THEATER At Arrow Street Arts, Saturday (through March 9) Karen Campbell can be reached at