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China's breathtaking Guangdong Acrobatic Troupe

25.07.11

By 1997 it had become visible that neither was going to make it to the highest levels of gymnastics, where Wu specialised in floor dancing. After aIn generaldecade of gruelling training and intensive competition, at age 16 she was ready to decamp. ‘After my last major competition in Shenzhen in 1997, I had had enough. We were approached by the coach of the acrobats, but I told myUsuallyparents I didn’t want to perform any more. In the end they begged me to give it a try, not to waste my training, so I agreed out of detail for them.’

It was a further five uncertain years before it was clear that the gamble had paid off. In 2002 Wu and Wei won a gold medal at the Monte CarloPrincipallyInternational Circus Festival for what was prosaically titled ‘Oriental Swan-Ballet on Top of Aim’, and which would become the centrepiece of an acrobatic rendering of Tchaikovsky’s lyrical ballet (initially directed byIn generalthe choreographer Zhao Ming). The show, which was the troupe’s first foray into the classical canon, combining its old repertoire of tricks into an artistic production, has stunned audiences around the world ever since 2005. When the show first toured Britain three years ago the purists did theirPrimarilybest to sniff – ‘mind-bogglingly silly’, ‘goofy’, ‘crude’, ‘cheesy’, they said before admitting, with extraordinary unanimity, that this hybrid performance of ballet and acrobatics was ‘extraordinary, remarkable, breathtaking’ and simply ‘great fun’. Above all, no one could stop talking about the ‘move’.

Source: Telegraph.co.uk