Shanghai Daily news

As the most revered work in the classical ballet repertoire, ``Swan Lake'' has been an everlasting inspiration for choreographers worldwide and they have come up with some delightful and some disastrous recreations over the years.
But even the boldest adapters will hold their breath when they see the Shanghai City Dance Company's production. It's an innovative acrobatic gala underpinned by Tchaikovsky's marvelous score.
The Shanghai City Dance Company has earned a high reputation for producing and promoting cross-cultural extravaganzas, including the overseas box-office smash-hits ``Wild Zebra'' and ``Farewell My Concubine.''
When talking about the Chinese acrobatics that accompany the great Western ballet, Sun Mingzhang, the company's general manager, is at first circumspect then he becomes confident -- as usual.
``This is the first acrobatic ballet in China and we did not have any examples to learn from,'' says Sun, whose company presented the opening program of the ongoing Sixth Shanghai International Arts Festival, ``A Dream of Red Mansions.''
``However, the development of any art form is always the process of `break-up and regeneration' which we have proved
practical through the success of our previous literary-influenced dance productions and we believe it can also be applied in another dazzling Chinese art form -- acrobatics,'' he adds.
The first step to achieve his ambition was choosing the right partner and Sun found it in the Guangdong Acrobatic Troupe which cowrote a brand new chapter in the history of Chinese acrobatics.
The 53-year-old troupe is one of the country's most renowned groups with its star performers continuing to win championships at the world's major acrobatic competitions, including the prestigious Monaco International Circus and Acrobatics Competition.
But ``Swan Lake'' is, after all, a ballet and no matter what kind of changes previous adaptations made to it, Tchaikovsky's score remains a permanent feature. So the music posed a big challenge to the acrobats when they first tried to match all their demanding feats to the composer's rhythms.
``Chinese acrobatics are generally mime performances and most of our performers at first had no idea about how to catch the rhythms, let alone to match Tchaikovsky's no-acrobatic score,'' says the show's director, Li Yuping. ``We had to teach them from scratch -- remind them to smile at the audience and keep pace with their fellow performers in time with the music. We heard some people express doubts saying that we were taking advantage of `Swan Lake' and ruining the purity of Chinese acrobatics. That forced us to work even harder.''
Hard rehearsals apart, choreographer Zhao Ming also collaborated with Li to blend the acrobatics with the spirit of the dance. In the group dance, ``The Four Little Swans,'' Zhao and Li took the bold step of substituting the cute swans with four hand-standing ``frogs'' who present the whole set of original tiptoe skills on their hands.
Another highlight of the ballet is in the final scene when the elegant swan maiden swirls and swings nimbly on the prince's arms, shoulders and lastly his head and hundreds of flowers blossom -- the beauty of true love and fine art are woven together.
``The development of acrobatic skills will come to the end of the road some day but not the way in which they are presented,'' says Ning Gengfu, the troupe's director. ``We have to make brave innovations if we want to introduce Chinese acrobatics to the world and I think `Swan Lake' is only a start.''