Theater group uses panda tracks to find its way through Chinese history

Children are continuously encouraged to participate and play with TPO's interactive set.[Photo provided to China Daily]

Two dancers take on the role of explorers and navigate an interactive set where children are welcome to participate and play

Two Italian explorers follow the footprints left by a panda and venture into the culture and history of China. This is the story being told in Panda's Home by Italian visual theater group TPO.

The show, which premiered in Prato, Tuscany, in Italy in September 2016, where TPO is based, will be staged in Beijing from March 24 to April 2. In January and February this year, the show was staged in France and Sweden.

The show also has been booked by the New Victory Theater in New York for June 2018.

"The work was appreciated (by Western audiences) because of the devices we used in the show: dance, pictures, sound and obviously, our interactive and immersive theatrical environment. But for us the true premiere will be the one that we will present in Beijing. We look forward to confronting a Chinese audience," says Francesco Gandi, the artistic director of TPO, an award-winning children theater company founded in 1981 and which is devoted to creating works that are highly visual and multidisciplinary using music, dance, art, sculpture, digital media and sound.

Gandi, along with Davide Venturini, the co-director of Panda's Home, became the artistic directors of TPO in 1999.