STAGE REVIEW : China Troupe Adds Balance to Circus

Le Cirque du Soleil opened at the Santa Monica Pier last month minus one of its star attractions, the Shandong Troupe of China. Cirque representatives blamed red tape in China for the no-show.

Well, the “rola-bola” troupe has finally arrived--in high style. This quartet of teen-agers draws some of the biggest applause of the show.

The set-up for the act looks deceptively simple--a small dinette-set table is brought on stage along with a cylinder and a board. Then Hou Yi, 13, balances the board on the rolling cylinder and stands atop it. Two girls, Hou Aman and Liu Qing (also 13), place bowls on each end of the board, and Hou Yi somehow flips the bowls into a stack on top of his head.

Next up is Wang Jian, 15. He assumes the same position as Hou Yi and holds a platform on which the younger boy climbs. Then, with another cylinder and board, Hou Yi repeats his act while standing on the higher level. The girls balance themselves on each side of Wang Jian.

The audience roars.

The Shandong kids look like the youngest people on stage, and they add a note of youthful charm that was more apparent when Le Cirque opened here in 1987 than it is in the rest of this year’s troupe.

Unfortunately, the circus still isn’t complete; the French trapeze act that opened the run is no longer performing because of a shoulder injury to Odile Simonin. A representative for the circus said a solo trapeze artist, Rebecca Perez, will replace the French group later this week.