Advertisement

DANCE REVIEW : Acrobats Balance Grace and Risk

TIMES STAFF WRITER

Two troupes of Chinese acrobats representing opposite ends of the political spectrum are touring the Southland this week. One is from the People’s Republic and one is from the Republic of Taiwan.

The Taiwanese group, the Chinese Golden Dragon Acrobats, appeared Tuesday at the Cerritos Center for the Performing Arts, and almost any act on their program could be sampled to find the essential ingredients that make this art-form appealing.

But consider one of the less flashier ones, called Water Meteors, in which small saucers filled with water are suspended at the ends of a rope that is spun, tossed into the air and caught again, without a drop being spilled. Well, almost without losing a drop.

Advertisement

Here is the tension, the risk, the grace, the simplicity of means and the emotional uplift resulting from defying forces everyone in the audience understands, that is common to almost all of the segments, which here show few innovations. Not that that is really a liability.

Sure, the sense of risk is proportionately--breathtakingly--higher in the sequence in which blindfolded men dive through hoops lined with knives and fire. Or when Feng-Hsian Liu bends in half an iron rod leveled at his Adam’s apple by hurling his body at it.

*

On Tuesday, the viewer’s anxiety level, too, rose a few degrees higher than usual in the Pagoda of Chairs because this year, the acrobat who ascended the perilous structure (Bin-Chung Poon) did not make use of a safety wire.

Advertisement

The emphasis on grace, correspondingly, took primary place in the women’s Ribbon Dance or in any of the many choreographed poses that began and ended their appearances, even as assistants to other acrobats.

But usually there is a mix of all ingredients in varying proportions and emphasis, as acrobats manipulate or juggle teacups, plates, large jars, a table or a kind of yo-yo with their feet or heads or even on the backs of their necks.

In fact, when first one and then another of the women spinning three plates at the ends of three rods held in each hand dropped some of them, the accidents merely confirmed that there was no trickery involved. It almost seemed intentional to prove that this was a human endeavor, and that the obstacles overcome everywhere else were legitimately overcome.

Advertisement
Advertisement