The China Circus performs Saturday night at the Chester Fritz Auditorium. Photo by Nicholas Nelson/The Dakota Student.

The Anhui Acrobats of China made their way to the Chester Fritz Auditorium Saturday night and entertained the audience with thrilling demonstrations of strength, flexibility and fun for the whole family.

The group of performers traveled from their home base in Branson, M0., where they have been performing for the past 16 years, to give Grand Forks a Chinese circus.

All the acrobats in the performance originally came from China, and many have been practicing their art since age 4.

Their expertise was obvious as they showed incredible feats of balance across the stage in a two act performance.

Despite minor hiccups and missteps throughout the night, the acrobats pushed through, dusting off mistakes with a smile and quickly moving on to the next act.

Twenty minutes into the performance, some technical difficulties arose wherein the music stopped periodically, leaving the performers unable to do their acts in awkward transitions.

After a longer pause in the sound, the announcer came on to apologize for the delay. It was soon back up and running, and the show didn’t miss a beat as it moved on to a female performer who showed an unreal demonstration of strength and flexibility. She balanced five lamps on her feet, hands and face as she bent and contorted her body into different positions.

It seems like a hard concept  — bringing an acrobatic circus to a stage with limited space, but the China Circus made it work by delivering incredible acts that took basic tricks to the next level.

One performer entered the stage with a single hula-hoop and finished with five hula-hoops, looping them around her neck, chest, stomach and legs. Another performer was hoisted into the air in a net and displayed stunts including the splits. At one point, she was hanging from the net with only the strength of her neck. The hoop divers did flips and tricks through a single hoop and by the end were doing flips through hoops raised seven feet into the air. Countless other acts of agility and skill were jam -packed into the two-hour performance that kept the audience hooked from start to end.

The few missteps that occurred throughout the show —- like the juggler dropping a few balls, the hoop divers knocking down the hoops and the technical problems — were minor compared to the difficulty and level of skill that they entailed.

The show may have started out rocky, but it made up for  itthroughout the night with impressive performances, with a lively display of spinning plates, group bicycling and jump roping that wrapped it up at the end. The cyclists took biking to the next level as the acrobats jumped from one bike to the next and created a 10 person pyramid on top of one bike, which received large cheers from the audience.

The Anhui Acrobats of China delivered an entertaining performance that brought both Chinese culture and breathtaking human physical performance to the stage. Even though the performance wasn’t flawless, they created a fun and unique experience, as well as a lasting memory for the crowd.

Ashley Carlson is a staff writer for The Dakota Student. She can be reached at [email protected].