The Golden Dragon Acrobats were literally jumping through hoops to please their audience at Rabobank Theater on Feb. 27.
The Bakersfield Community Concert Association’s president Carol E. Smith opened the show by thanking Fruitvale Junior High’s seventh- and eighth-grade concert band for performing the pre-concert music and also the BCCA members and audience for their support of this event.
According to Smith, the Golden Dragon Acrobats had performed in Bakersfield in the 2002-2003 season and “are back by popular demand.”
The show commenced at 7:30 in the evening; however, at 6:30 more than half of the theater seats were occupied.
Concert Chair Denise Eyherabide said there were 3,004 seats in the Rabobank Theater and by the time the show was ready to begin, about 80 percent of the house was full of an eager audience.
Family counselor and ordained pastor Ted Stone, who works in Bakersfield part time, awaited the arrival of his wife and friends who drove in from Tehachapi to observe the acrobatic acts.
Routines were extraordinary and required extreme physical strength, concentration and discipline.
Each performer’s body was lean and very muscular, whether male or female.
The acrobats’ manager Eric Huang, 29, said that performers usually begin training for these routines between the ages of 6 and 8 years old.
Huang has been managing this particular group for four and a half years; however, the company has been operating for 30 years to date.
The two-hour show consisted of some truly jaw dropping acts, one of which particularly had the audience in awe.
It was called “The Tower of Chairs,” in which the performer must precisely stack chair upon chair while he balanced himself so as not to tear down the tower.
Then once he had almost touched the ceiling of the theater, the amazingly strong acrobat’s biceps rippled as he used mainly upper body strength to balance himself, toes to the sky, on the highest chair while the chair was tilted at various angles.
According to Huang, acrobats get traded every two to three years, and they will be getting new acrobats this coming September.
The acrobats have toured all of the United States and, according to their program, “over 65 countries on five continents.”
The Golden Dragon Acrobats will be heading to San Diego for their next performance anticipating approximately 1,500 in attendance.
Touring until May of this year, the acrobats expect to be back in China once the tour has ended.
At $60 per admission, the audience, which was mostly a mature crowd.
Considered the price to be reasonable taking into consideration the overhead required to assemble a theatrical performance such as that given by the Chinese acrobats.
To make a little extra cash for their touring expenses, just outside the theater, 22-year-old performer, Yan Hong Dan from Cangzhou, China, was managing the sales of the Golden Dragon Acrobats’ products consisting of DVDs, mouse pads, scarves and for $3, fans could take home their own Chinese yo-yo.
While only one of the 24 acrobats speaks a bit of conversational English, all of them have mastered the universal language of quality entertainment.