The 12th China Acrobatics Golden Chrysanthemum Award National Acrobatics Competition and the 6th China Acrobatics Art Festival concluded on Saturday in Puyang, central China's Henan Province, pairing the country's top acrobatics prize with its first world circus dialogue and new international partnerships.
The Golden Chrysanthemum Award is China's highest professional acrobatics honor, and ten of the 26 acts that reached the final took prizes. At Saturday's awards ceremony, winning performances such as "Chronicles of Mountains and Rivers: Wave Bridge" and "Realm of Dimension: Group Tightrope" were staged alongside classic magic and comedy acts from previous editions.
Song Guanlin, a Golden Chrysanthemum Award judge and board member of the National Arts Fund said the artistic quality of acrobatics depends on more than technical skill.
"When you infuse technique with emotion, that's the very lifeblood of acrobatic art," he said.
Chinese acrobatics enjoys a long-standing international reputation. The dialogue brought representatives of international circus organizations together with Chinese acrobatics professionals to discuss cooperation.
"China is a big player in acrobatics, and there has always been deep exchange between Chinese acrobatics and the international acrobatics and circus community," said Yu Yigang, president of the China Acrobats Association.
For Helmut Grosscurth, managing director of the European Circus Association, the most striking performances were those blending acrobatics with new technology.
"And that combination with new technologies like the human pyramids on these electric motorbikes and the handstand guy on a robot and all these ideas. They're moving platforms everywhere. And so that was really impressive for me because we don't have that in Europe and we'd like to bring that to Europe," he said.
During the festival, the China Acrobats Association also signed a strategic cooperation agreement with Cirque du Soleil, one of the world's largest contemporary circus producers, with the two sides set to cooperate on talent cultivation, co-creating shows and expanding into overseas markets.
Andre Lachance, senior director of casting, coaching and performance medicine at Cirque du Soleil, said the partnership is valuable precisely because it runs in both directions.
"That collaboration is important because not only [do] I believe we can provide some knowledge, but I think we can learn from you guys also. So it's not about one direction, but it's about how we can collaborate and get better all together. And I believe that the signature was only the starting point into future collaboration and obviously like the long-term relationship that we're trying to build," he said.
China acrobatics festival concludes with first global circus dialogue
