List of circus skills

Circus skills are a group of pursuits that have been performed as entertainment in circus, sideshow, busking or variety/vaudeville/music hall shows. Most circus skills are still being performed today. Many are also practiced by non-performers as a hobby.

Circus schools and instructors use various systems of categorization to group circus skills by type. Systems that have attempted to formally organize circus skills into pragmatic teaching groupings include the Gurevich system^[1] (the basis of the Russian Circus School's curriculum) and the Hovey Burgess system.

Hovey Burgess system

The Hovey Burgess pedagogy divides circus skills into three categories, each subdivided into three skill levels.

Category	Preliminary skills	Essential skills	Diversified skills
Juggling| Balancing objects	Toss juggling: balls, rings, clubs	Gyroscopic juggling: devil sticks, diabolo, plate spinning, etc.
Equilibristics	Headstands and hand balancing	Balancing: on rolling objects (unicycle, rola bola, etc.), on "stilting" objects (stilts, freestanding ladder, etc.) and human columns.	Rigging: trapeze, horizontal bar, slackwire, tight wire, etc.
Vaulting	Jumping	Turning the body along its long, medium and short axes	Catapults

Hovey Burgess has been known to compare his system to Newton's third law (i.e., "for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction"). Vaulting is concerned with action; juggling is concerned with reaction; equilibrium is the intersection of action and reaction.

Equilibristics

Circus skills which involve balancing or maintaining equilibrium. The term applies equally to acts in which the performer balances on a piece of equipment or a prop, and acts in which the performer balances a prop on a part of their body.

• Unicycle riding
• Stilt walking
• Tightrope walking
• Acrobalance

Object manipulation

• Juggling
• Devil sticks
• Plate spinning
• Risley act (antipodism)
• Contact juggling

Alphabetically

Acrobalance Acrobatics Acro dance Adagio Aerial hoop (lyra, cerceaux) Aerial silk (tissu, fabric, ribbon, silks, aerial contortion) Aerial straps Animal training Artistic cycling Balancing Banquine Baton twirling Buffoonery Bullwhip Bungee trapeze Chair balancing Chinese pole Chinese yo-yo Cigar box juggling Cloud swing Clown Club swinging Contact juggling Contortion Corde lisse (vertical rope, smooth rope) Cradle Cyr wheel (roue Cyr) Danish pole Devil sticks Diabolo Electric act Fire dancing (fire twirling, spinning, manipulation) Flag spinning Flying trapeze Foot juggling / Icarian games[2] Freestanding ladder German wheel (Rhönrad, gym wheel) Globe of death Hair hang (hair suspension, hair hanging) Hand to hand (main à main) Hand balancing (équilibre) Hand walking Hat manipulation

Hoop diving Hooping Human cannonball Human pyramid Juggling (balls, clubs, rings, etc.) Jump rope (skipping ropes, double-Dutch) Knife throwing (impalement arts) Lasso Lion Taming Mexican cloud swing[3] Mime Multiple trapeze Object manipulation Perch (equilibristic) Physical comedy Plate spinning Pogo sticking Poi spinning Puppetry Rebound straps Ringmaster Risley (antipodism) Rola bola (balance board) Rolling globe Roman ladders Russian bar Russian swing Spanish web Springboard Stage combat Static trapeze Stilt walking Teeterboard (Korean plank) Tightrope walking (or slackwire walking) Trampolining Trapeze Trick riding Trick roping Tumbling (power track) Twirling Unicycle Ventriloquism Voltige (equestrian vaulting) Wheel of death (Space wheel) Whistling

Circus and sideshow attractions

Armless wonder Bearded lady Bed of nails Bee bearding Blade box Body modification Camels Chapeaugraphy Elephants Entomophagy (insect eating) Fiji mermaid Fire breathing Fire eating Flea circus Freak show Glass eating Glass walking Gurner Half-Man Half-Woman

Hook suspension Human blockhead Human dartboard Human zoo Iron tongue Magic acts Midgets Midway Monkeys Pedal go Pickled punks Piercing acts Ponies Rubber Man Shallow diving Sideshow Snake charmer Strongman Sword swallowing Two-Headed Man

References

1. "The Classification of Circus Techniques" by Hovey Burgess. The Drama Review: TDR, Vol. 18, No. 1, Popular Entertainments (Mar., 1974), pp. 65-70. doi:10.2307/1144863.
2. "Circus Glossary". Circusland Company. Retrieved 13 November 2012. Icarian Games: One of varieties of antipode [foot juggling] genre. In this instance a performer's partner plays as antipodist's props used for tossing and juggling
3. "Aerial Acts". Flying High Circus, Florida State University. Retrieved 13 November 2012.

Further reading

• Burgess, Hovey (1976). Circus Technique. Drama Book Specialists. ISBN 978-0-910482-72-1.