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Defying Physics by Toba Singer January 17, 2004 -- Marin Civic Center, San Rafael, California Opening to the music of traditional Chinese instruments and a keyboard, the Peking Acrobats, successor to the 1920s Great China Circus, offers a spectacular array of its post-revolutionary accomplishments. Working without harnesses
or safety equipment, the young acrobats rely on the laws of physics, teamwork,
rigorous training and scrupulous timing to present truly breathtaking
(come armed with an oxygen canister) feats. Traditionally, Chinese acrobatics
flourished as a folk art that made use of easily accessible household
objects such as chairs, tables, bicycles, candles, bowls, knives, swords,
and rope. Today’s aerialists use all of these, beginning with parallel
ropes, from which they jump one to the other horizontally and head first,
or which they loop around their limbs, scaling them, then descending in
a swoosh, head first, landing effortlessly on cats’ feet. A single performer
will successively mount six candelabras on upturned soles, forearms, her
head or neck, and contort her body in order to move in four directions
while flames dance from several ports in each candelabra. Perhaps most
astounding is the chair balancing “stunt” (though one hesitates to use
such a prejorative term—as there are no apparent sleights of hand involved):
An aerialist successively mounts chairs balanced one on top of the other,
supported by a single bottle, until he attains a height where the top
half of his head hides just beneath the valance at the very tippy top
of the curtain. There was a time in my life when I climbed chemical tanks
for a living, and I admit that while watching the aerialist I had to (somewhat)
avert my eyes when he reached the uppermost chairs, and, gulp, looked
down and then up, and then smiled confidently, whilst MY stomach
churned. The finale opens with the
women draped in white, carrying stiff-stemmed, white lily pads (or are
they paperwhites?), as they move through a series of delicate dance steps,
a kind of cool-down number that balances everyone’s qi with plenty of
warmth. Please join the discussion in our forum. |
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Peking
Acrobats 
Dance
is also part of the repertoire, with arabesques en l’aire supporting a
half-dozen bowls or other fancier dining room ordnance. Having seen many
lion dances since relocating to the San Francisco Bay Area, there is none
that compares with the Peking Acrobats’. A lion family of three takes
the stage. Mama lion gives birth to a cub, who then beguilingly paws his
mother and himself. The choreography, costumes, and concept have nothing
in common with the gratuitously frightening, though often half-hearted
and routine, amateur versions I have seen here.