This year’s Hong Kong International Arts Carnival opened with an acrobatic and dance show devoted to one of Asia’s more forbidding historical figures, Genghis Khan. Oddly, though, the legendary conqueror is rather a muted presence in this entertaining production by the Inner Mongolia Acrobatic Troupe of China; no dancer represents him, and all we see instead is a portrait of Genghis at the centre of Act One’s brightly painted backdrop.

Divided into three acts and set to Mongolian music, the show runs for just under two hours – too long for some of the children in the audience. That is a shame, given that the festival is aimed at families and young people on summer vacation.

Act One takes place during the celebrations of Genghis Khan’s coronation; Act Two is meant to show his people training in archery and other combat exercises; and the final act depicts the prosperity of Genghis’s empire. But these themes are not clear unless one reads the programme notes first.

The acrobatic numbers (18 in total, spanning all three acts) are only very loosely related to the conqueror’s tale: one of the highlights of Act One, for example, consists of five colourfully clad women pedalling unicycles and flipping bowls from their toes on to each other’s heads. Still, these pieces are performed with winning charm and apparent effortlessness.

The most interesting episodes are those with an ethnic Mongolian flavour, notably an exotic number in Act One, where the women balance candlelight lamps on their feet. Later the women pile themselves into three tiers in a lotus-shape formation illuminated by their lamps. The tower is, in fact, a recurring motif: in Act Two, a woman slowly climbs up to the top above at least a dozen chairs before gradually descending and removing each of them. And in Act Three, a troupe of wrestlers forms a human pyramid.

There is no shortage of spectacular sights in Genghis Khan: Act One’s spectacular ensemble dance, for example, in which eight women each manoeuvre a gigantic festooned gold spear, a symbol of blessing; or what appears to be a pagan ritual in Act Three, in which benches are assembled like a jigsaw to form the shape of an animal, and then perched above a male dancer’s head.

Towards the end there is by contrast a breathtaking, expressive duet, when a couple seemingly fly while each holding on to a large piece of fluttering red silk fabric. But ultimately the show could be made stronger – and more compelling for an adult audience – if some of these set-pieces were sacrificed for a more coherent, less episodic narrative, and one more closely related to its purported subject. ★★★☆☆

Tel +852 2734 9009