There was no need to look out for falling plates in this routine. The Shangdong Acrobatic Troupe of China in performance, at the Ranny Williams Entertainment Centre, Hope Road on Saturday.

Mel Cooke, Freelance Writer

The name of their region in China has long come to Jamaica stenciled on bags of cement, but on Saturday night the Shandong Acrobatic Troupe employed strength, dexterity and flexibility of very pliant limbs in a concrete display of their art at the Ranny Williams Entertainment Centre, Hope Road, St. Andrew.

And with colourful costuming, smiles and sometimes dramatic presentation, all to recorded Chinese music, they made a definite impression on an audience,

including many children, that braved threats of wet to sometimes do a balancing act of their own on the edges of half of the blue chairs at the centre.

Ladies in red delivered five lit lanterns, yellow flame peeping through a web of openings, to one of their own on her stomach on the stage. With one on each upturned limb and one on her head, the human candelabra slowly and gracefully turning to hoist her illumination at different angles to spark applause.

Strength and teamwork

A young member of the Shangdong Acrobatic Troupe of China defies gravity as she balances flaming candles. - photos by Winston Sill / Freelance Photographer

Six men and a woman in single shoulder stretch singlets, took turns at leaping through three white hoops of small, medium and huge sizes, at times making the clearances in a rapid succession to make a black and gold whirl hitting the hollow bullseye, then displaying strength and teamwork in various combinations to clear circles that, at a few points, trembled from close contact, but did not fall.

The martial arts were not left out; A white and blue clad man sending a three-section nunchaku whirring like brown helicopter blades through the air, another snapping air with each slash of a shiny sword and yet another, seated on the stage before his opponent, twirling his head to evade the thrusts of a blade lashed to the end of a wooden stick in true movie style.

The martial arts displays were brief, however, the following comedic tussle between a pair of jolly figures in multi-coloured stripe shorts being an extended acrobatic fuss, sometimes graceful and sometimes slapstick comedy, full of near misses, sitting on empty air and bounces. It ended with one winning the battle of the chair, but thinking that he had killed his friend, said friend standing stiff with a lifeless face when hoisted upright, but grinning with a chuckling audience when lifted and moved. And slapstick ended with a slap, as a stiff, supposedly dead right hand was whirled around to connect with the face of the man who, feeling guilty, was checking for signs of life.

Seven young ladies with five long sticks in each hand topped off by a whirring gold saucer kept their 70 discs rotating through a series of balancing feats, the first in which they did a stand on their forearms, legs pointing to the ceiling,p while the saucers whirled close to their waists, proving to be a mere warm-up.

Magical

The Shandong Acrobatic Troupe went magical with a lady in red on stilettos, her neckline shimmering with sequence and her apparatus that resembled a large old camera on a tripod central to her bag of tricks. Red and white handkerchiefs stuffed separately into a container came out knotted together; coloured streamers came out of a small hole over the thin air of two connected rings.

More martial arts came before the finale, in which the stage became a flurry of 14 red and white clad men and women who formed a pyramid, tumbled through hoops in rapid-fire fashion, connected down-turned palms on upturned soles to sent toes skywards.

The show ended in towering fashion, the tumblers forming a steeple of bodies reaching to the ceiling, the person topping off the pyramid upside down.