Shanghai is regarded as the hometown of acrobatics. Everyone, young or old, educated or not, can easily appreciate it while watching or seeing the acrobats perform. There is no language barrier and borders of culture do not limit it. Shanghai acrobatists dedicate to show the audience unique performances unseen in any other places.

Acrobatics is an interactive art form. Everyone, young or old, educated or not, can easily appreciate it while watching or seeing the acrobats perform. There is no language barrier and borders of culture do not limit it.

Chinese Acrobatics is one of the oldest performing arts. Its history can be traced back to Neolithic times. It is believed that acrobatics grew out of labor and self-defense skills, which people practiced and demonstrated during their leisure time. The early performance is "walking on three-meter-high stilts while juggling seven gaggers". Then it developed into an entire art form.

Together with the developing economy, acrobatics is also evolving into a kind of performing art. It became well known worldwide while performances are presented along the Silk Road. In Europe and North America, Chinese acrobatic performances always attract large audiences.

The acrobatic performers were trained strictly the basic skills starting from the early age of six or seven years old. Because the required techniques are extremely difficult and risky, the training is long, hard and intense. Examples of basic skills are handsprings, somersaults, waist and leg flexibility, and headstands. The performers must endure great deal of unexpected pains in order to become excellent.

As what the pictures show, performers illustrate the harmonious beauty of human body when performing to the public.

carrying umbrella on the footAcrobatic art has its own peculiarity. As the performance itself is very depictive, it has high requirements and interdependent to light effects, costumes or clothing and music. The theme music perfectly coincided with the performance, which could make the atmosphere even livelier. A successful acrobatic show also requires appropriate clothing. Costumes further enhance the beauty of the performance and increase its visual effects.

In Portman Acrobatic Show, you will enjoy juggling (one of the traditional elements of Chinese acrobatics, as well as of western circus arts), diabolo or Chinese yo-yo, feast of equilibrium (the frequently part of circus and acrobatic performances during which the performer grips one straight apparatus (for example: stick) in his teeth and balances a second one (with a glass and flower balanced precariously atop it) on its tip. And the performer gradually shifts position so that the sticks meet end-to-end in a full vertical, then slowly returns them to a perpendicular arrangement.), body contortionism (sometimes called "barrel squeeze play") and the "unique bowl flip".

In contortionism performance, the performer maneuvers his doubled-over body into and out of a narrow hoop and a tight barrel. The "unique bowl flip" demands the mastery of several skills all at the same time: riding a unicycle with one foot, balance an ever-taller, increasingly-wobbly stack of bowl on his/her head, kicking and catching on his/her head several bowls at one time. Each successive flip is done with a greater number of bowls, and the bowls already caught are stacked high upon her head. As the stack of bowls on her head grows taller (and thus less stable), the performer should exercise with great care to keep them from falling. At a certain point, the performer must catch the flipped bowls behind, since she/he cannot look up without dropping those already perched on her/his head.