The flying trapeze
2 min readSilk Strips and Chinese Regional Opera
The 1990’s saw the emergence of a number of innovative acrobatic acts based on artistic concepts. Blue Daydream on Silk Strips is representative of this new trend. This piece has its origins in an aerial stunt that appears in a regional Shaoju opera from southern China called 72 Suspensions. In this stunt the performers roll themselves in and out of a long suspended strip of white silk, bobbing up and down like human yoyos. During the 1960’s,a number of acrobatic troupes adapted and refined this technique, in-corporating aspects of Leather Strip acrobatics and suspended ring gymnastics to create the innovative act known as Silk Strips. Utilizing amazing arm strength and impeccable balance, the performers twist and fly up and down the flexible silken strips as effortlessly as if they were providing rigid support.
Blue Daydream on Silk Strips
Blue Daydream on Silk Strips, by the Flag Circus of China, offers further innovations on Silk Strips. In this piece, the pure and unaffected emotion of two young city women draws two powerful and beau-tiful gods of love into the mortal world, where they awaken the deeply sleeping soul of humanity. The eerily beautiful movement of the performers, living sculptures suspended in mystic blue as they travel between ancient and modern and East and West, creates a vast sense of space. Seamlessly blending evocative story and difficult technique, Blue Daydream on Silk Strips inexorably draws the audience into its magical world. This piece is particularly distinctive because all of its techniques and stunts express an overall artistic concept. The multifaceted aesthetic vision it portrays by combining dance and gym-nastics with acrobatics goes far beyond stereotypes of art and form, to create a new type of acrobatic art replete with romanticism and imagination. Blue Daydream on Silk Strips is a bright new beacon in acrobatics, illuminating the realm between art and technique.
