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Bored? Celebrate the Chinese New Year, the Year of the Boar, with the Fruitvale Junior High School Concert Band and the Golden Dargon Acrobats Tuesday, Feb. 27 at 7:30 p.m. at Rabobank Theater. Doors open at 6:30 p.m. for the Wildcat concert.

The Fruitvale Junior High Concert Band will perform  at the Rabobank Theater immediately prior to a performance by the Golden Dragon Acrobats. The Fruitvale band is conducted by Josh Barr.

The Acrobats troupe’s manager, Bill Fegan, has been putting them in hundreds of venues around America for 30 years now, including the upcoming Rabobank Theater show.

Even so, "I still sit in awe … I still don’t believe that they’re doing this,"  he said.

So just how amazing are the Golden Dragon Acrobats, who’ll be here Feb. 27, leaping, bounding and generally thumbing their noses at gravity? 

China keeps turning out crop after crop of brilliantly conditioned acrobats who can contort their bodies into configurations and climb atop one another and over assorted objects 30 feet into the air - among dozens of other feats that require going out on every limb of the human body. 

None of them speak English. . 

Every last acrobat comes from China, where they were trained from childhood onward.

This is something that has been going, as they say, for quite some time. As in, oh, around 25 centuries.

Though some historical records suggest that the art of Chinese acrobatics extends as far back as 4,000 years, it didn’t become all the rage, so to speak, until around 2,500 years ago.

That’s when the emperors began to sit up in their thrones and take notice..

The actual birth place for the art form was "the farm houses of peasants, where it was a kind of a winter activity," says Fegan. Making do with the objects at hand, from chairs to plates, "they began playing with household stuff, and that’s how it got started. They developed their skills in the winter and when spring came, they came out and performed in a community festival."

Word got out.

"After awhile, it became very popular and was used as entertainment for the emperor at court," Fegan says.

And now 25 centuries later, it’s onto bigger fish: The Golden Dragons now command a truly royal seven-week performance on Broadway each year.

The 22-member troupe headed to Bakersfield Feb. 27 range in age from around 17 to the venerable age of 31.

Venerable, at least, in the world of Chinese acrobats, whose window of opportunity is no different than that of a world-class athlete or dancer. 

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Regardless of which country they come from, the acrobats have all been training since around the age of 8, and they all spend about two years touring stateside until the need to return home arises. So the ranks are constantly being replenished with new blood.

"These kids learn to walk on their hands the same way we learn to walk on our feet," Fegan says. "Then they develop other skills as they move forward."

After being accepted into the Golden Dragon Acrobats ranks, each performer is allowed to cultivate his or her special skill.

Speaking of "his and her," the membership is divided equally along gender lines, meaning there will be 11 men an 11 women on the Rabobank Theater stage.

Some of the things we’ll see them doing on Feb 27, will have their roots in routines those original peasant acrobats were doing in say, 221 B.C., during the Han Dynasty: spinning plates on poles, leaping through hoops, balancing a 30-foot tower of chairs and humans, etc.

But, adds Fegan, the acts have all been refined and made even more challenging over the centuries, which is why, after witnessing hundreds of performances, he can still sit in an audience with his jaw on the floor.

"The tower of chairs is the most requested act when somebody books us," he admits. "So we always have some permutation of that."

Simply put, it involves one man stacking six chairs atop a table, which achieves the 30-foot height. At the peak, a performer does a one-hand handstand and revolves.

Despite the apparent huge risk involved, Fegan says he has only witnessed it go awry once in 30 years.

"We were in a tent outdoors when a big wind came up and blew the chairs down. He (the acrobat) fell with them and was taken to the hospital, where he had 17 stitches put into his face. That night, he was back on stage doing it again. Amazing."

Another act that pops Fegan’s eyes is one of the female contortionist, who twists her body around in bizarre configurations while balancing six towers of glasses filled with water - on each of her hands, atop her forehead, in her mouth, all while "writhing around stage and so forth."

In all the years of the routine’s twisting and turning, "I’ve never seen anyone drop anything."

What Fegan has seen are the lavish visual accompaniments of the florid costuming and choreography that, he says, are unmatched by any of the other three or four Chinese acrobatic companies that tour stateside each season.

Not only do the shows attract regular folks, he adds, they’re also hot tickets among celebrities whenever they turn up on Broadway and elsewhere.

For example, Tom Cruise arrived with his entourage/family one night recently.

Luckily, notes Fegan, the performers weren’t told beforehand. If they had, that 30-foot chair tower or those six towers of water-filled glasses might have come tumbling down.

Fegan agrees: The laws of gravity are sometimes more easily overcome than the pressure of mega-stars in the audience.

The Golden Dragon Acrobats performance at the Rabobank Theater is presented by the Bakersfield Community Concert Association. For more information phone (661) 326-0838, email communityconcert@yahoo.com or go to www.geocities.com/communityconcert/