Inspired by the life cycle and mating habits of birds, the piece was a kind of "March of the Peacocks," beginning with a dozen dancers hidden behind gigantic white balloons, from which they popped up, hatchlinglike, and proceeded to explore the world. As the dance progressed, these bird figures appeared to mature and pair up for mating. But as those cinematic penguins showed, life as a bird isn't without hardships and pain, and on occasion a dancer stepped apart from the brood for what seemed a melancholy walk beside a sort of peacock queen mother (a visibly pregnant but unassailably regal Margot Brown). These tensions gave the piece, playful as it was, a richer emotional texture, a sense of life with both joys and sorrows, often intertwined. It's the perspective of someone who has lived enough to know that mix of sunshine and rain, and Patterson pushed herself to layer that into her piece.

Austin Chronicle