Jan

You Can Be A Circus Artist!

I say it all the time to people I meet: “Of course you can do it!”

Part of what makes the circus such a marvelous and extraordinary place is because the audience believes these performers are breaking the bounds of human capability, flexibility, and strength. Many circus performers would have you believe that it is indeed true, especially when they make their acts look so easy and yet, the regular person trying to recreate the same feat at home (though you should NEVER try this at home! ) fails miserably. Most people think that circus performers must work at their skill since birth or childhood.

Though some performers do indeed start at as young as two or three, the truth is the circus arts are much more accessible than most people think. I had never so much as picked up a juggling ball when I first decided to try out the circus arts at 19 years old and it was only about a year later that I was already doing what my friends thought was “amazing!”

A perfect example is of contortion. Contortion is one of the most commonly misunderstood acts in the circus. 90% of people (a completely made up statistic, by the way) believe that contortionists have been stretching and conditioning their bodies since they were five to ten years old. Fact of the matter is, doing that kind of extreme stretching is generally damaging for kids that age. Contortionist who have trained at that young an age usually never grow up to be taller than 5’3″ because their growth plates have been damaged. And what’s worse is, by the age of 25, they have to retire because their bodies can’t handle the abuse anymore.

On the other hand, there are 40, 60, even 80 year olds who learn contortion. Well, the 80 year old might have strated when he was 73, but nevertheless! extreme acts of physical fitness are still possible at older ages. We are conditioned to believe that our bodies are designed to break down by that age, but it is not at all the case, so long as you take care of it.

The same is true for just about any circus art you can imagine. You don’t have to be the pinnacle of physical fitness to swing on a trapeze, or climb a silk, or balance on top of a chair.

Just food for thought for any of you who are dying to try stilt-walking for the first time. It can take a while to learn any new skill (the circus arts are notorious for skills that take a long time to master), but a while can mean anything from a few years to about a week.

All you really have to do is believe in yourself (despite how cliche it sounds)!