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The secret thrill of watching acrobats: we want to know that daredevils can fall The secret thrill of watching acrobats: we want to know that daredevils can fall
(4 months later)
Were they supposed to fall like that? A quiet, puzzled question is heard off-screen in the video, just after eight sequined women hanging by their hair plummet – with their broken rig – onto other performers on the ground below.Were they supposed to fall like that? A quiet, puzzled question is heard off-screen in the video, just after eight sequined women hanging by their hair plummet – with their broken rig – onto other performers on the ground below.
I can understand the speaker's confusion. Modern big-budget circuses use such a range of special effects to dazzle our senses – they give us such a shiver of ersatz fear – that it would have seemed more than likely, at first, that the whole thing was a trick. But Sunday's appalling accident at a Ringling Bros and Barnum and Bailey Circus performance in Providence, Rhode Island was real, and it did send 11 members of the troupe to the hospital.I can understand the speaker's confusion. Modern big-budget circuses use such a range of special effects to dazzle our senses – they give us such a shiver of ersatz fear – that it would have seemed more than likely, at first, that the whole thing was a trick. But Sunday's appalling accident at a Ringling Bros and Barnum and Bailey Circus performance in Providence, Rhode Island was real, and it did send 11 members of the troupe to the hospital.
Even as a child, I never jumped off a wall or into a swimming pool. I am a fervent fan of circus (the animal-free kind), precisely because I am a coward who prefers to get her adrenaline rush vicariously. Acrobatics is beautiful, dance freed from the earth, but it also involves a level of physical courage that fascinates me because I can't imagine ever feeling it myself. Even as a child, I never jumped off a wall or into a swimming pool. I am a fervent fan of circus (the animal-free kind), precisely because I am a coward who prefers to get her adrenaline rush vicariously. Acrobatics is beautiful, dance freed from the earth, but it also involves a level of physical courage that fascinates me because I can't imagine ever feeling it myself.
Researching my latest novel, Frog Music, about a little cluster of real-life French immigrants in San Francisco in 1876, I discovered that one of the main characters, Arthur Deneve, had been an acrobat back in Paris. I decided to make him a trapeze artist, because he was inseparable from a friend and fellow performer, and the catcher-flyer bond in trapeze is one that puts your life quite literally in the hands of your partner.Researching my latest novel, Frog Music, about a little cluster of real-life French immigrants in San Francisco in 1876, I discovered that one of the main characters, Arthur Deneve, had been an acrobat back in Paris. I decided to make him a trapeze artist, because he was inseparable from a friend and fellow performer, and the catcher-flyer bond in trapeze is one that puts your life quite literally in the hands of your partner.
The history of safety equipment for acrobats is murky. Jules Léotard, the pioneer of the flying trapeze, used a pile of mattresses. The first recorded safety net seems to have been a concession to mid-Victorian sentiment about children: Canadian showman the Great Farini provided a net to an "aerial drummer" boy with whom he appeared at Chelsea Pleasure Gardens in 1866, billing him as El Niño Farini. (Born as Samuel Wasgate, this child went on to have an even more successful eight-year run as "the beautiful Lulu the Girl Aerialist". )
The history of safety equipment for acrobats is murky. Jules Léotard, the pioneer of the flying trapeze, used a pile of mattresses. The first recorded safety net seems to have been a concession to mid-Victorian sentiment about children: Canadian showman the Great Farini provided a net to an "aerial drummer" boy with whom he appeared at Chelsea Pleasure Gardens in 1866, billing him as El Niño Farini. (Born as Samuel Wasgate, this child went on to have an even more successful eight-year run as "the beautiful Lulu the Girl Aerialist". )
But the net was not rapidly or universally adopted. In 1928, when the European troupe the Great Wallendas were said to have misplaced their net en route to Madison Square Garden, they won a 15-minute standing ovation for performing their human-pyramid-on-bicycles-on-a-hire-wire act without one. (As anyone who watched Nik Wallenda cross the Grand Canyon last year well knows, going net-free is the family trademark to this day.) Some circus managers are said to have resisted the net right up to the 1950s, on the grounds that acrobats could be hurt by landing badly in the mesh, bouncing off or ripping through.But the net was not rapidly or universally adopted. In 1928, when the European troupe the Great Wallendas were said to have misplaced their net en route to Madison Square Garden, they won a 15-minute standing ovation for performing their human-pyramid-on-bicycles-on-a-hire-wire act without one. (As anyone who watched Nik Wallenda cross the Grand Canyon last year well knows, going net-free is the family trademark to this day.) Some circus managers are said to have resisted the net right up to the 1950s, on the grounds that acrobats could be hurt by landing badly in the mesh, bouncing off or ripping through.
It doesn't take a cynic to suspect that management might also have been concerned about basic safety measures reducing the thrill of sitting in the crowd, beneath the daredevils.It doesn't take a cynic to suspect that management might also have been concerned about basic safety measures reducing the thrill of sitting in the crowd, beneath the daredevils.
So, are they supposed to fall like that? Of course not. But the excitement of acrobatics has always been about the perceived risk that they will. A sense that equipment, endless rehearsal and the utmost professionalism has reduced that risk to the point of being negligible – but not quite gone. In an era when many truly risky behaviours (eating, drinking, taking medicine, walking downstairs, getting in a car, crossing a road) feel utterly banal, the circus puts danger on show and gives it back its dignity.So, are they supposed to fall like that? Of course not. But the excitement of acrobatics has always been about the perceived risk that they will. A sense that equipment, endless rehearsal and the utmost professionalism has reduced that risk to the point of being negligible – but not quite gone. In an era when many truly risky behaviours (eating, drinking, taking medicine, walking downstairs, getting in a car, crossing a road) feel utterly banal, the circus puts danger on show and gives it back its dignity.
Risk, freedom – thrill-seekers and the fear-averse will never agree on the right balance between the two. I thought about this all the time when I was writing Room, about a woman raising her child in captivity in a 10-foot-by-10-foot shed. She constantly frets over whether to keep him "safe" (in the dangerous safety of a locked cell, visited nightly by a sociopath) or to take the most enormous chance (risking both their lives) in the hopes of winning him freedom.Risk, freedom – thrill-seekers and the fear-averse will never agree on the right balance between the two. I thought about this all the time when I was writing Room, about a woman raising her child in captivity in a 10-foot-by-10-foot shed. She constantly frets over whether to keep him "safe" (in the dangerous safety of a locked cell, visited nightly by a sociopath) or to take the most enormous chance (risking both their lives) in the hopes of winning him freedom.
That's an extreme situation, but every parent I know has to parse the subtleties of risk assessment. Let them go in a taxi with no baby seat? Ride their bikes on the street? Food additives, trans fats, traces of peanut? If you make the playground equipment safer, crafty kids may compensate by using it more dangerously.That's an extreme situation, but every parent I know has to parse the subtleties of risk assessment. Let them go in a taxi with no baby seat? Ride their bikes on the street? Food additives, trans fats, traces of peanut? If you make the playground equipment safer, crafty kids may compensate by using it more dangerously.
So I will always love acrobatics as a memento mori, that skull in the bottom of the tankard: you glimpse it and you know you’re still alive, for now.So I will always love acrobatics as a memento mori, that skull in the bottom of the tankard: you glimpse it and you know you’re still alive, for now.