ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the paradoxes of the circus form, in relation to perceptions of risk-taking and the performance of danger, and by contrasting examples of flying trapeze acts and Circus Oz aerial acts. Although circus signifies large social concepts such as freedom, marginality, and human exceptionalism, the conceptual focus is on how circus performance is perceived as dangerous in visual as well as metaphoric ways. Circus aerial acts are discussed to unravel some of the paradoxical implications of perceived and actual risk. All circus acts are intended to hold an audience's attention but some acts are viewed as having more risk and therefore being more dangerous than others. Contemporary circus mitigates against the risk management that has spread into all public activity in recent decades in ways that curtail behaviour and fragment judgement and with parallels to what Mary Douglas discerns are 'political uses of danger' in the 'politicization of risk'.
