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Circus comes to town |
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Beijing Weekend By Huo Le
The latest incarnation of the Russian Circus show features monkeys taking the reins of horses - perhaps appropriate for the upcoming Year of the Monkey which is signalled by the start of the Spring Festival. Cats and dogs and bears and tigers are amongst the other breeds of animal used in the show. "We hope that kids will have lots of fun while watching animals' performances," Liu Jinlong of show sponsor Beijing All Culture Communications Co Ltd said. The Russian Circus is to give four performances in the afternoons and evenings of January 23, 24 in the Workers' Gymnasium (Tel 6502-5757). Animal displays are just one part of the rich, colourful repertoire. Stuntmen aim to dumbfound with their daring on the trapeze in appropriately titled programmes such as Flying Men in the Air. Circus clowns meanwhile target the funny bones of the audience. Other shows aim to create a dreamlike world of fantasy in which nothing is quite as it seems. Horsemanship and circuses have a long history in Russia. From the 18th century, almost every czar had his own royal circus performers to provide entertainment for the royal families. Because of this tradition, several families came to make a living by performing horsemanship and animal training generation after generation. In the 1950s, the government of the former USSR founded the Russian Circus, the largest-scale and highest ranked circus of them all in the country. Many of these circus families joined up at that time. Chinese audiences are not unfamiliar with the circus. In 1956 when it toured China, the late Chairman Mao Zedong shook hands with the Russian performers after the shows. The circus made a sweeping tour of China in 2002, breaking box -office records wherever it went. "To make both regular and new audiences feel fresh about the programmes, this time we asked the circus to add in new, different tricks to their repertoire," Liu said. |
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2001 By China Daily Information. All rights reserved. |
