Handstanding ovation

Alex Coolman

Lesson No. 1 is always the same for the men and women who train to join

the troupe of Peking Acrobats: Learn how to fall.

It’s a safe bet that every performer in the 28-member group, which comes

to OCC Saturday evening, will take a spill at some point during a

rehearsal of their routine. The complicated tumbling, balancing and

gymnastic feats they perform are, by design, tricks that push the limits

of human agility.

Don Hughes, who co-produces the tours of the troupe from his Pismo Beach

office and has worked with the group for 27 years, says he’s watched the

complexity of the routine gradually increase over the years. Each

generation of acrobats tries to perform the tricks slightly faster,

slightly higher and in a way that’s slightly more dangerous than the

approach their predecessors developed.

It used to be, Hughes said, that the Peking Acrobats would create a

“pagoda of chairs,” a balancing act involving stacked chairs, as a finale

for their act.

“The chairs used to go straight up. They would get up to the top, and

they would do a one-handed horizontal handstand,” Hughes said.

But that act, which wowed Hughes a few decades back, is now a mere

“throwaway.” The pagoda has evolved into something far more mind-bending

and precarious.

The chairs are now stacked on one another at 45-degree angles, Hughes

said. Four members of the troupe ascend to the top of the construction,

which shakes and chatters with their every movement.

Then, with disaster seemingly inevitable, all four acrobats extend

themselves into graceful handstands.

“That’s when you bite your nails,” Hughes said. “If that first chair’s

not balanced, they’ll all come down. And they have come down.”

The troupe members’ desire to challenge themselves and keep their

routine evolving is part of the proud acrobatic tradition of China,

Hughes said.

Acrobatics are said to go back thousands of years in that country.

Records exist of tricks performed by skilled troupes during than the Han

Dynasty, which began in 206 BC.

“There are paintings in caves of some of these tricks,” Hughes said.

“They still do it the same way.”

Today, nearly 100,000 people study acrobatics at schools that specialize

in the art, Hughes said. Children begin training to attend these

academies when they are very young and may begin working professionally

as early as age 9.

With so much competition for a limited number of slots in touring groups,

the acrobats must demonstrate phenomenal skill to distinguish themselves.

“You’ve got to be a damn good acrobat to be professional, and then you’ve

got to stand out even more to be in a group like [the Peking Acrobats],”

Hughes said.

Within each group, there is a constant drive to refine the techniques in

the repertoire.

“What they do is they look at someone else’s act, and they say, ‘Oh,

that’s good,’ ” Hughes said. And then they try to figure out how to do it

better.

But for the Peking Acrobats, improving the show never means making the

props more elaborate or the staging more showy. As Hughes pointed out,

every routine the troupe performs uses only ordinary household items:

chairs, knives and forks, a bicycle, a stick of bamboo.

The only way to take an act a step further, therefore, is to add risk. If

getting 10 people on a bicycle seems impressive, they try for 14. If

balancing on a rope with shoes on manages to wow a crowd, they do it on a

wire, barefoot.

And always, Hughes said, they make it look easy.

“They do it with a smile,” he said -- the smile of men and women

managing, just barely, to keep their act under control.

WHAT: The Peking Acrobats

WHERE: OCC’s Robert B. Moore Theatre, 2701 Fairview Road, Costa Mesa

WHEN: 8 p.m. Saturday

HOW MUCH: $16 to $31

PHONE: (714) 432-5880