Art beat in May

Standout Finnish voices

Club for Five, a contemporary Finnish a cappella group, will perform in Beijing and Shanghai. Five musicians with diverse backgrounds, soprano Maija Sariola, alto Susanna Hietala, tenor Jouni Kannist, baritone Juha Viitala and bass-baritone Tuukka Haapaniemi sing the group's repertoire both in Finnish and English. The music is mainly self-arranged and self-composed pop music with influences from a variety of genres.

7:30 pm, April 30. Shanghai Oriental Art Center-Concert Hall, 425 Dingxiang Lu (Road), Pudong New Area, Shanghai. 021-6854-1234.

7:30 pm, May 1. Beijing Concert Hall, 1 Bei Xinhua Jie (Street), Xicheng district, Beijing. 010-6605-7006.

Dark side of the circus

Cirque du Soleil will come to Beijing for the first time with its show, Le Noir - The Dark Side of Cirque. According to creative producer Simon Painter, the performers will be "extremely close to the audience, which has never been done before". The stage is circular, with the audience surrounding it. With the use of three colors - white, red and black - the show takes the audience on a journey through the dark side. "The three colors best represent everyone's darker side. Everyone in the show and in the audience has a favorite color out of those three colors, and we want to know which color represents your darker side," Painter says.

2:30 pm, 7:30 pm, May 1-3. Beijing Workers' Gymnasium, Gongtibei Lu (Road), Chaoyang district, Beijing. 4006-228-228.

-Chen Nan