Circus troupe woos crowds with spectacular show
By Arif Suryobuwono
JAKARTA (JP): High in the air, the girl atop the stack of 10 chairs gracefully tops off her handstand with daintily pointed toes.
Below, one by one, six fellow performers lithely follow her lead until all are doing handstands on their chairs, which are balanced atop still another chair sitting on four long-necked bottles on a squat, short-legged table.
The audience explodes into applause as not even a ripple appears in the red liquid in the bottles holding up the soaring staircase of chairs.
Thousands gaze in awe, most likely certain that the spectacle is well worth the Rp 25,000 (US$10.7) they paid for a VIP seat or the Rp 5,000 ($2.1) they shelled out for a seat in the gallery.
Then the dismantling began. The girl returned to a normal standing position, dropped the top chair and climbed down on a ladder set near her. Only now does the liquid in the bottle quiver. Some spectators look worried as the tempest in the third- filled bottles roars. As collective sigh of relief was audible as the last performer hopped down.
This was the most difficult and daring performance by the state-owned Wu Han acrobatics troupe of China at a circus organized and presented by the Taman Safari circus group in the Senayan East Parking Lot.
The circus, featuring four groups from China, Indonesia, the United States and England, plays two times every evening, starting at 5:30 p.m, until the end of this month.
No fear
The girl, Wu Ying, told The Jakarta Post after the performance that she feels "excitement and pride that I can make it" each time she finishes a show.
Does she ever feel afraid of making the smallest mistake which would knock the whole structure off balance? The 22-year-old native of Wu Han city in southern China said "I know no fear". She said fear simply never dawned upon her.
She has trained and lived with the troupe since she was small, so both her skills and her fearlessness have come naturally.
Even if she were to blunder and fall head-on, she would not plunge to her death. Instead, she will hang in the air. In today's circus, the risk has been virtually nullified. Worldwide circus rulings require acrobats like her to wear safety belts attached to ropes on a pulley hidden above the big top.
The other shows presented by Wu Han troupe, which has won 20 gold, silver and bronze medals in various international circus contests, are all difficult acrobatic and balancing acts.
They include two girls holding and exchanging a big porcelain jug with their feet, a group of girls performing acrobatics, their hands balancing saucers with sticks and an aerial ballet dance balanced from the forehead of a man riding a bicycle.
Nuance
Interspersed among the breathtaking Chinese acrobatic shows are the elephant acts and clown performances by the Taman Safari circus group of Indonesia.
The Manuel Gonzales group of Florida, the United States, provides still another nuance to the colorful spectacle. Gonzales himself performs a balancing act on logs, while his daughters, 17-year-old Daniella and her six-year-old sister Telina, perform with hoola-hoops. The Gonzales' presentation includes a cabaret- like show by a group of young women from a dancing school in Doncaster, England.
There is striking difference between the approach of the Chinese and the American groups to the show. The Chinese wear traditional qibao costumes. The Americans, particularly the women perform scantily clad. At the end of each show, the Americans salute the audience in a flamboyant way, drawing as much applause as they can. The Chinese, despite their efforts to imitate the Americans, are typically reserved and formally polite.
"This is regarded as their weak point in world circus contests," Jansen Manansang, managing director of the Taman Safari circus group, told the Post.
Equestrian acts, a typical Western circus highlight, are not to be found in this circus. The elephants acts fill the gap delightfully. The flying trapeze is also missing from this circus, which fills the three hours and 40 minutes of its shows will balancing thrills instead.
Jansen said he hired the Wu Han troupe for one month and the Gonzales group for three months. He declined to mention how much this cost.
Jansen said the use of foreign circus troupes to attract larger crowds has been part of his marketing strategy since 1992.
"Our own circus group, can perform a variety of acts, including the flying trapeze show, which are by no means inferior. But the presence of foreign groups, especially those with white females, always attracts bigger crowds," Jansen said. This is one of the reason he has the Gonzales group staying longer.
"After all, we have to follow the taste of our spectators who favor imported things," he added.
Jansen, himself an acrobat with the Jakarta-based Oriental circus group in the 1970s, is particularly proud of two things: his bicycling group and the brand new big top.
"The Wu Han group can perform a balancing act on a bicycle with 12 acrobats. We do it with 14, thanks to two world-class Chinese trainers. We're better than them," he said.
He added that because of that, the Wu Han troupe performed that event only on the first day and has since substituted it with other bicycling acts.
As for the big top, it has just been purchased from Germany for more than Rp 1 billion ($427,350). It has a diameter of 60 meters and is supported by only eight masts as compared to the conventional tent, which requires 40 masts. It can accommodate up to 2,000 people, be opened and closed by remote control. It is water and fire-resistant, and can withstand wind pressure of up to 95 atmospheres per hour.
When rain comes down, however,water flows into the tent from underneath, creating puddles here and there.
And rain is exactly what Jansen dreads. "When I was young, I was a trapeze artist and an acrobat. I also trained chimpanzees. Like Wu Ying, I never felt afraid," said the 45-year-old director.
"As I grew older, I began to fear," he added. "I don't know why. But one thing that I am afraid of at this moment is rain. In the last few days it has rained heavily. Many seats were empty. I was afraid I would incur losses."