Handbalancing

Standing on hands. Handbalancing covers handstand performance – on the floor, on canes, on towers of chairs, on revolving platforms, whatever. As with many disciplines, Chinese circus leads the field when it comes to blistering difficulty – the pioneers of handbalancing, in a purely technical sense, are mostly 14 year-olds still being run through the gears of the State system. In the contemporary circus scene, the discipline has found its place among a broader vocabulary that encompasses the dichotomies of strength and fragility, standing and falling.