As pretty and delicate as a music-box dancer, the wire-walker gracefully ascends to her perch high above the crowd. With a Chinese parasol in hand, she dances, twirls and somersaults weightlessly between two parallel tightropes and even rides a unicycle high up in the air. The two tightropes are four feet apart with a five-foot drop, which further increases the difficulty of the act, making it all the more astounding.

Before the start of the next performance, our resident clown takes the stage for a bit of hilarity, but soon takes a back seat to the clamor of taďko drums, as they call upon the next performance -- the Double Tight Rope.

Here, dressed in pink with an orange umbrella, a female Chinese artist begins her ascent into the skies - walking straight up a tight rope to where she'll perform high above the stage. Once she reaches her perch, the artist defies belief jumping from one tight wire to the next with minimal effort. And once you think this performance is done wowing the audience, she mounts a unicycle and amazes us once again by performing a flip directly off its seat. The performance comes to a close with an ending fit for this lighter than air performer -- sliding down the rope from wince earlier ascended and back into the hands of the crowd.

The performance is set to the melded tunes of "Kaze" and "Norweg", and although separate songs on the CD, "Kazé" and "Norweg" are interestingly combined during the Double Wire act. "Kazé" is a subtle piece with synthesizer flute and a rich melody that continues throughout. A basic 4/4 drum pattern is laced with a kalimba-like sound and a choir "ah" sound from the keyboards. The subtlety ends and "Norweg" kicks in with a moving bass line that is reminiscent of a 1950's-like chord progression. During the intense moments of the high wire artist's jumps from wire to wire, the song evolves into a keyboard-fingered triplet section in a 6/8 time signature. As the audience breathes a sigh of relief following the artist's successful performance, "Kazé" is revisited to calm things down, then Saltimbanco enters into a world of fantasy.

Features text written by Richard Russo and Paul Roberts, as published in the “Fascination Newsletter”.