Ageless Festival: Bird Nerd and the Red List – Leeds City College

Choreographer: Marie-Louise Flexen

Feathers go flying in this well-researched and charming dance solo, that uses birds as fables for modern life, and gives practical advice for what audiences can do to help them survive and thrive. Recorded quotes in the sound score like ‘No more than a speck against the sky’ and ‘Do you ever rest?’ depict bird characteristics and deeper existential questions.

Dancer and choreographer Marie-Louise Flexen is an extraordinary mover with a seemingly effortless control of her body. Her attention to detail means her movement vocabulary of fluttering fingers, arching elbows, hopping feet all read very convincingly as bird-like. The fragility is there too, especially as the feathers fall, during the live nightingale song, and the interruption of the chainsaw in the sound score. Sometimes the quick tonal shifts make the flow of the work feel a little uneven. However they seem necessarily jarring, given the ecological anxieties being explored thematically.

The costumes are a dancer’s interpretation of the birds listed in the piece, with feather adorned waistcoats, painted tailcoats and glittering top hats. Props are a practical birders kit complete with tent, picnic, rain mack, and of course binoculars. The latter informs the screen projection, with a binocular eyed view of each bird explored throughout the piece.

Choreographic highlights include the Fred Astaire-like tap solo of the lesser spotted woodpecker on a tree stump, which expands the dance vocabulary beyond expressive contemporary in a fun and engaging moment. With Flexen’s evident skill as a dancer, Bird Nerd and the Red List illustrates how ‘There is beauty to be found in the ordinary and smallest things’, and argues effectively to protect them.

Reviewed on 11th July 2026