“Stilts Drivers”: Theater Artists Reinventing Chinese Cultural Heritage With Circus Stilts

What happens when ancient Chinese dance meets circus stilts?

Young artists from Pupa Theater Arts Studio in Xiamen, Fujian province, are lighting up public spaces with stunning performances on stilts. You might remember them stealing the show at last year’s Wuzhen Theater Festival, where Chinese netizens fondly called them the “stilt drivers” of Wuzhen. Their latest work, “Xuan Niao,” literally “mysterious bird,” combines kinnara dance, an intangible cultural heritage from Yunnan, with circus stilts, offering a new perspective on traditional aesthetics.

Theater director Peng Lu founded the troupe back in 2018 with friends and students. Over the past eight years, she and her crew have dived deep into environmental theater, pushing the boundaries of imagination. “We’re a bunch of young, bold, passionate people doing something really cool,” she says.