 "Photo: Photo courtesy of the Carpenter Performing Arts Center")
The talented Shangri-La Chinese Acrobats amazed an audience of all ages at CSULB's Carpenter Performing Arts Center Saturday sharing their harrowing and death-defying displays with their extremely flexible bodies.
The show opened up with Chinese clowns riding on unicycles. Women came on stage performing “Let the Spinning Spin” where colorful umbrellas would spin constantly, no matter body shape the women were in.
Men dressed in red suits did back flips and dove through sets of rotating hoops of varying heights with upbeat Chinese music in the background. One man was able to juggle a vase, either small or big, with his neck and the vase did not break.
What was very impressive with these acrobats was how synchronized and graceful they were as a group, no matter what task. The harmony of body and mind can be clearly seen in the acrobats, who easily could bend their bodies intounimaginable angles.
“I thought the body bending was weird, especially their necks!” a young adult attendee said. “This show is different.”
There were also ballet dancers on roller skates, dressed in traditional pink tutus skating around flowers in vases without any mishaps. These performers clearly took advantage of physics when they spun on a large stool without falling. Again physics did not fail when a male acrobat held a woman upside down by the head on his head.
Knowing how fragile wine glasses can be, a female acrobat was able to hold trays of lit candles and scores of filled wine glasses on her nose. She only dropped one glass when she was on a seesaw.
The most daring trick in this show was when a woman was able to stand atop stacks of chairs 30 feet above the floor without getting killed. The bottom chair was supported by just four bottles of wine.
“It's wonderful,” an attendee said. “They must have started very young to be this flexible.”
“Do not try this at home,” said Carpenter Performing Art Center's Executive Director Michele Roberge. “The acrobats were trained doing these tricks.”
Video: Shangri-La Acrobats
The following video was posted by the Carpenter Performing Arts Center. Visit their YouTube Channel for more.
