Two years ago, when Zhao Xue, director of the foreign division of the Shanghai Acrobatic Troupe (SAT), was told an ancient Chinese myth about the Jade Emperor and the 12 Chinese zodiac animals by a Frenchman named Alain Pacherie, she was astonished since she was not familiar with the legend. Without waiting for Zhao's reaction, Pacherie immediately said to her, "We should develop a Chinese acrobatic show based on this story and present it to European audiences."

Pacherie is the founder of Parisian circus company Cirque Phénix and the president of the International Circus Festival of Tomorrow.

Two years later and Pacherie's idea has come to fruition. Since January 17, The Jade Emperor, a co-production between SAT and Pacherie's Cirque Phénix, has been touring around European countries including France, Belgium and Switzerland. The cast of acrobats from SAT will conclude their tour of 36 cities on March 23.

Stage photos from The Jade Emperor Photos: Courtesy of Lapin Blanc

The show debuted in Paris, where it ran from November until January 12, under Cirque Phénix's big top, which has become a local cultural landmark since it was built in 2000. 

"There were 76 performances, with over 350,000 spectators, and it was listed the No.1 show out of around 15 acrobatic shows in Paris at that time," Zhao told the Global Times.

Explaining how a Chinese acrobatic show based on an ancient Chinese legend has been able to arouse such interest among European audiences, SAT director Yu Yigang said that the secret of The Jade Emperor's success is the fact that the show was "tailor-made."

According to Yu, The Jade Emperor is SAT's first show made specifically to target a foreign market; the customer who commissioned the work was Pacherie's Cirque Phénix.

Zhao told the Global Times that the show's plot follows the efforts of the Jade Emperor, the ruler of heaven and Earth, to protect animals from human abuse. The Jade Emperor selects 12 animals to present themselves to his palace so that they will never be persecuted. These are the 12 animals of the Chinese zodiac.

The two-hour show contains 16 acrobatic acts, all drawn from SAT's classic and internationally awarded repertoire.

Based on the story, most people might imagine that the 12 animals portrayed by the acrobats will appear on stage in the order of the Chinese zodiac and perform different acrobatic acts.

Stage photos from The Jade Emperor Photos: Courtesy of Lapin Blanc

However, Zhao told us that the French did not want to design the show based on the order of the animals' appearance in the zodiac, but rather on the level of impressiveness of the acrobatic acts.

According to Zhao, the French team firstly mapped out the technical specifications for the visual universe of the show, and then, chose the acts that had the potential to be the climax of the whole show. Each acrobatic act was matched with an animal based on the animal's characteristics. Finally, the Chinese team of artists, coaches, costume designers and choreographers adapted acts from their existing repertoire according to the specifications and suggestions from Cirque Phénix.

For example, one of SAT's acts is famous for its insanely difficult moves, so the French producers paired it with the tiger, as they believed it could demonstrate the animal's powerful temperament.

In 2012, the original SAT act won the Golden Clown, the top award at the 36th International Circus Festival of Monte Carlo. It is a recreation of a traditional springboard acrobatic act with some new, breathtakingly difficult moves, including double somersaults and four vertical somersaults linked with five horizontal somersaults. The moves are considered to represent the very cutting edge of acrobatic skill.

Other acts include male acrobats playing monkeys who juggle straw hats, and goats, played by female acrobats, who leap onto a pyramid of benches.

Zhao added that the French team's more market-oriented approach to arranging the acts made the show even more spectacular.

"In another change from Chinese aesthetics, they even cut the original six-minute opening prologue to just one minute because they believe there is no need to make it so busy; it should seize the imagination of the audience as soon as possible," Zhao added.

Stage photos from The Jade Emperor Photos: Courtesy of Lapin Blanc

In his lengthy career as a circus show producer, Pacherie has worked with Chinese acrobatic troupes for two decades. In the press release for The Jade Emperor, he said that in the past, circus fans tended to be critical of the cold perfection and technical precision of Chinese acrobatics. However, over the last few years, he has begun to see the emergence of a new breed of Chinese acrobatic artists who are not only the product of traditional circus troupes and schools, but are more freely expressive and able to adapt traditional acts to appeal to the contemporary tastes of an increasingly demanding audience.