A fight scene in the battle to liberate Shanghai from the new circus production Dawn of Shanghai, which opened the 21st China Shanghai International Arts Festival on Oct 18. [Photo provided to China Daily]

By making a new circus production the opening show, the CSIAF hopes to take Chinese acrobat performances to new heights and introduce it to international audiences, says Wang Jun, president of the CSIAF organizing committee.

The acrobatic theater production tells the story of young revolutionaries on the eve of the Communists' takeover of the city in 1949. "The greatest surprise is how the heroic story is told so strikingly and thoroughly through circus performance," wrote cultural critic Huang Qizhe in an article published by the Shanghai-based Wenhui Daily.

Huang compared the emphatic reception of the production to the one received by The Eternal Wave, a dance theater production by the Shanghai Dance Theater which was one of the 10 winning productions at the 12th China Art Festival in May, saying that both are successful examples of revolutionary history presented using contemporary aesthetics for today's audiences.