In an effort to boost China's cultural exports and overseas influence, a trade fair of performance arts opened Tuesday in the southern Guangdong Province on the sidelines of the country's main arts festival.

The "China Guangzhou Excellent Stage Performance Fair," which organizers hope will become a regular feature of the China Art Festival, provides a platform for meetings between Chinese art troupes and domestic and foreign stage performance agents.

The four-day event, the first of the kind in China, is aimed at helping Chinese performance arts enter the global market.

Almost 50 heads of major arts troupes and festivals, including Musical Theater Works International and the International Circus Festival of Monte Carlo, attended the fair, which featured Chinese drama, music, acrobatics, puppet shows, kung fu plays and other arts forms.

Ten agreements were reached Tuesday, the first day of the fair, between domestic troupes and foreign dealers, including one deal that will bring the Chinese stage musical "Butterflies" to Europe and the United States.

Other deals will bring performances of Chinese kung fu art to countries such as Germany, Poland and Qatar.

Dong Wei, arts director of the Ministry of Culture, said the trade fair was conducive to the development of Chinese arts and the arts market, and would boost cultural exchanges between China and other nations.

Broadway-style "Butterflies"

Tony Stimac, a musical theater consultant and president of the U.S.-based Musical Theater Works International, said "Butterflies" was the first Broadway-style musical out of China, which was "a distinct piece of Chinese performance art" and "a historical thing."

"Butterflies" is a contemporary interpretation of China's time-honored romance "Liang Shanbo and Zhu Yingtai", also known as the "Butterfly lovers."

"The love story is universal," said Stimac, and Western audiences would be familiar with the melody and theme of the Chinese "Romeo and Juliet."

He said the musical would be staged in Spain, Italy and Germany in 2011 and the United States in 2012.

Stimac came across the musical when touring with the Broadway classic "42nd Street" in nine Chinese cities in 2007. "I heard the musical was on and wanted to watch it." He watched it eight times.

"I told Li Dun (the Chinese producer of 'Butterflies') that I would help him get this on all over the world, and we signed the agreement today," he said.

The original stage musical production of China's Songlei Culture & Media Communications has reaped success domestically since it debuted in 2007.

Its performance in the Republic of Korea last year was also a hit.

Stimac said when he was watching "Butterflies" in China, "the audience loves it, they stand up, cheer and shout and get carried away."

He said the performance told the story in a new way with "good actors and score."

"Right now, all we see (in the world about China) are acrobatics and monks or kung fu. It's (the musical) going to be a hit as it is new and different."

He said "Butterflies" needed "a little adaptation in terms of lyrics and music" so that Western audiences could follow the story, as "Chinese work is more poetic and a little more complex, and ours is a little simpler and straight ahead."

Producer Li Dun said they invited leading directors to improve the musical and work hard to bridge the cultural differences.

Stimac was excited about the prospects of the industry in China, saying he worked on "bringing Chinese performances to the rest of world both in terms of business and art."

His Musical Theater Works International, established in 1983, aims to develop new musicals. It has produced 60 original musicals in 15 years in the U.S., six of them moved to Broadway and two of them -- "Beauty and the Beast" and "Aida" -- for the Disney organization.

Capacity building

Yu Yizhong, director of the cultural department of south China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, said efforts should be made to encourage international stage performance agents to talk face-to-face with domestic performance art companies and enhance publicity of Chinese cultural products overseas, such as establishing such a trade platform.

Urs Pilz, art director of International Circus Festival of Monte Carlo, said it was very important to take cultural productions featuring Chinese images abroad.

Pilz has toured China many times to select acrobatic performances for his production, which is one of the top-level circus events worldwide. "Chinese acrobatics are very strong," he said. About 10 percent of performances of the Monte Carlo festival were from China.