DANCE REVIEW : Acrobats Showcase Essentials

Two troupes of Chinese acrobats representing opposite ends of the political spectrum are touring the Southland this week. One is from the Mainland, 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.

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 and feels bound by, that is common to almost all of the different 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 forward against 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.

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 tea cups, plates, large jars, a table or a kind of yo-yo with their feet or heads or even on the backs of their necks.