CHINA DAILY
Panda! debuts in Las Vegas and wows audiences with a combination of Chinese magic, opera, dance and martial arts.
The Venetian and Palazzo Las Vegas debuted Panda!, the first Chinese show to take up residency in Las Vegas, earlier this month. The 47-member troupe, led by acclaimed Chinese director Zhao An, opened to worldwide audiences just two weeks before the Lunar New Year.
Produced by China Jingwen Records and Global Panda Entertainment and directed by Zhao, who helped produce the opening ceremony of the 2008 Beijing Olympics, Panda! is a spectacle combining high-flying acrobatics, thrilling martial arts and Chinese music and dance.
"It's an authentic Chinese show with Chinese magic, Chinese opera, Chinese dance and choreography. But we put in a lot of Western cultural concepts so that audiences from both East and West can enjoy it as great entertainment. Our cast of world-class performers will also prove to everyone that talent is borderless," Zhao says.
The show was put together in five months by acrobats from the China National Acrobatic Troupe. The martial-arts performers spring from the birthplace of kung fu, Shaolin Monastery Kung-fu Monks Troupe, while the dancers are from the China Da Qing Dance Group.
"If you were awestruck by the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics, this show is for you," says John Caparella, president and chief operating officer for the Venetian, the Palazzo and Sands Expo. "It's an amazing show, very authentically Chinese, and the elements of acrobatics and technology are very different."
Wang Hui, producer of the show and president of Global Panda Entertainment, says he and his team members put the show together piece by piece across continents for two years, with a total investment of $12 million.
"The show is the best thing that ever happened to Vegas, bringing the spirit of Chinese culture onto a mainstream stage in the United States. There are about 60 circus shows in town but never a show that is completely done by the Chinese. I believe it's extremely important we present Chinese culture on a global stage," Wang says.
The story is about a heroic panda trying to win back his love, the peacock princess, after she is kidnapped by a demon vulture. He gets help from a Shaolin martial-arts master who teaches him kung fu.
The climax of the show is when Shaolin kung fu fighters take acrobatic tumbles with swords, knives and three-jointed pikes. They break bricks in half with their heads.
According to Keith Salwoski, publicity chief at the Venetian and the Palazzo, the show will take up the Cirque du Soleil slot for an open-ended run, changing its content every few months based on audience response.
"The feedback from the audience has been superb in the last few days and we are very pleased to have invited this fantastic team to perform at the Venetian. Everyone is already talking about the show in town and it definitely has word-of-mouth potential," Salwoski says.
Livia Wu, director of operations at Global Panda Entertainment, says Panda! is the first show in Las Vegas that can admit children under 6.
"We've witnessed so many touching moments of children lining up with their parents, anxious to watch the show and eager to hug a 'panda'. I believe we will capture the market and audience in Las Vegas," Wu says.
Xiao Xiayong, culture consul at the Chinese consulate in San Francisco, says a Chinese show being presented on a mainstream US stage has symbolic meaning to the Chinese, Chinese-Americans and Americans.
"The cultural phenomenon is so encouraging that we hope to see more of it," he says.
Jeff Civillico, an American who watched the show, calls it visually "stunning".
"A lot of the acrobatic movement is so difficult that it makes you feel you need to hold on to your chair to watch it," he says.
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