CHINESE ACROBATS TUMBLE INTO SPORTS ARENA

Traveling as a Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey star act, the Shanghai Acrobatic Troupe is being provided capitalistic perks that most people back in China can only dream of.

For a grueling 27-city tour that stops at the Los Angeles Sports Arena through Aug. 17, the Chinese are housed in a custom-outfitted train car, complete with a two-wok kitchen for the troupe’s cook from Shanghai, a refrigerator with ice-cube maker, a washer and dryer, color television and a full VCR setup stocked with Hong Kong kung fu movies.

These perks are all part of the business deal that Ringling President Kenneth Feld made last year in Peking with the official Performing Arts Agency of the People’s Republic.

The venture is part of a larger trend nurtured by China’s Communist government in the post-Mao era: dealing unabashedly in profit-making collaborations with Western private entrepreneurs, ranging from oil explorations off the China coast to a planned Club Med resort in Guangdong province.

The Ringling tour represents a new twist for Peking--dispatching acrobatic troupes to play the U.S. amusements circuit, including such theme parks as Disney World in Orlando, Fla., Astroworld in Houston and Six Flags Magic Mountain in Valencia.

“This is business for us--organization to organization, not government to government, not only for cultural exchange,” said Zhu Dekang, director of the Shanghai Acrobatic Troupe.

Mark Wilson, whose North Hollywood firm books Chinese troupes for the Six Flags parks, including the Chongqing acrobats now at Magic Mountain, explained it this way: “Peking wants foreign dollars like everyone else. They want the troupes to become more self-supporting.”

The Shanghai troupe was something of a trailblazer for China. In 1980, a year after diplomatic relations were established, the troupe made an eight-city U.S. theater tour--including New York’s City Center Theatre and Washington’s Kennedy Center--that was billed as the first acrobat tour group from the People’s Republic.

And last year the troupe became one of China’s regulars on the theme-park circuit, performing all summer at Astroworld and for two weeks in October at Six Flags Magic Mountain.

Feld said Ringling is paying more than $1 million to present the Shanghai troupe this year.

“They’re the best in China. We consider it a real coup--the first performing group the People’s Republic has allowed to tour with an American show organization,” said Feld, who noted that Ringling had been trying to land a Chinese acrobatic troupe for the past decade. But, he added, “I don’t think they fully realized the magnitude or pace of this kind of American show.”

Indeed, Ringling aides on the tour said the Chinese troupers have been suffering from a double dose of culture shock: Circus life is as foreign to them as the American way of life.

For a troupe that rarely tours in China, and then hardly on the Ringling scale, the touring pace and number of stops have presented a wholly new experience.

Also, the Chinese, whose own theater in Shanghai is a 1,650-seat facility, find the vast size of U.S. arenas, the more rambunctious audiences and the frenetic three-ring format a jarring experience, troupe director Zhu said.

“It’s been tough on them, because our setting is a lot more freewheeling, less controllable. They found that everything, including entire staging setups, changed drastically from city to city,” said Ringling assistant general manager Michael Melssen.

Zhu said his acrobats were still taken aback by the lavish scale of the Ringling operation. In China, he said, his troupe is the only act on the bill, and the emphasis is on finesse rather than stage dramatics.

“This is different for us,” Zhu added. “We’re not used to such size and so much activity, and everything happening at one time. Here, you need more than two eyes to see us.”

For the Shanghai troupe, having their own home on wheels, and their own cook, were key conditions in agreeing to the Ringling tour, circus officials said.

But it’s the sightseeing tours--another of the perks guaranteed by Ringling--that seem to fascinate them most. Along the circus route, they have toured just about every major historic, corporate and entertainment monument from New York to California, including the nation’s Capitol, the Colonial town of Williamsburg, Wall Street’s stock exchange, Disney World’s Epcot Center and the San Diego Zoo.

And a cigarette factory in Greensboro, N.C.; a computerized newspaper facility in Richmond, Va.; the mansions of the upper crust in Palm Beach, Fla.; the rodeo in Oklahoma City; an air-conditioned shopping mall in Phoenix.

According to Feld, the Shanghai troupe has already agreed to a Ringling tour next year that will cover a different route, including many cities in the Midwest.

Shanghai troupe director Zhu put it this way: “This circus is very good, even if it (the production style) is not ours. It is very big, very colorful. This is what Americans like, isn’t it?”