ABSTRACT
A circus act is a set of actions, that is, a succession of implemented plans which are ordered according to an overall rhetorical structure. Physical survival and the negotiation of social situations constantly require that we act or abstain from acting. The latter can be, of course, construed as a form of action. The kernel of a circus action is the implementation of a physically challenging plan but such actions are performed within a cluster of verbal, musical, and visual modifiers whose deliberate purpose is to make the actions appear easier or more difficult and dangerous than they actually are. The attitudes and behaviour of the assistants who monitor aerial acts from the ground play a significant part in construing modality of an action as particularly dangerous. Trainers belong to two different categories depending on whether they deal with domestic animals of higher status like dogs and horses or wild animals which qualify them as able to perform the impossible.
