Yang Liping herself appears in three of the numbers. There is a solo in the middle about a cow with clinking bells, and she opens the show by playing a pregnant woman giving birth, and ends it with a pas de deux with her niece who plays the daughter. Her trademark staccato-like movements are as expressive as ever, but have taken on more complexity in meaning.

Comedy abounds in this percussion-heavy show. "Tigers and Tigresses" are childishly playful. The multi-segmented "Strange Birds" offers plenty of laughter besides imaginative ways to recreate sounds. Xiao Apeng, a male solo singer, impersonates both a proud sparrow and a humble mouse. After the mouse is rejected by the sparrow, he insists that "Next year I’ll marry a magpie".

If you’re still not clear what kind of show this is, let me put it this way: Sounds from Yunnan is like the creators of Stomp and Blue Man Group were born in Yunnan and had the astounding lithe physique of Yang Liping.

Yunnan always claims to have the most color in China. Now we know it also has the widest spectrum of sounds.

Sounds from Yunnan plays at Beijing’s Poly Theater through Sunday and will continue its national tour. Impressions of Yunnan, without Yang Liping on stage, plays nightly in Kunming.