For the sake of spectacle
July 31, 2025
A little while ago, I saw a free circus performance from Circus Bella, which is a group that performed for Artown. Artown is a festival where artists—singers, painters, and the like—gather in our local community to support each other.
All the performances from Circus Bella were impressive, and I was honestly surprised it was free. There were performers who did aerial silks and hoops, one who did tricks on a diabolo, one who flipped tables and pots on her feet, one who bent metal objects with just his arms, and one who rode a bicycle backwards, balancing three bowls and a cup on his head while also trying to land a spoon into said cup on his head from his foot. Well, the last person didn’t land the spoon the first time, but got it the second time.
When watching though, I observed one thing: how much the applause varied between each performer. All of them were deserving of applause—I definitely couldn’t do any of the skills the performers did. But I did notice that the gymnasts got significantly less applause—if any at all—than everyone else, which I thought was incredibly unfair. In particular, the performer who bent metal objects got applause just for flexing his biceps. Not to say that he didn’t put a ton of work into what he did, but seriously? The gymnasts, who spent their entire life so they could be flexible and graceful, got nothing when they hit each pose while spinning in the air, when this guy can get attention just by aligning with a hypermasculine ideal?
At first, I thought this was a matter of sexism. My feminist rage flared up, until I thought about it a little more. Perhaps this situation is more complex than I realized at first. Sexism probably played a role, since gymnastics is a female-dominated sport, and the performers who happened to get more applause were also male. But I think this discrepancy in applause also has to do with how people view entertainment and how they respect different disciplines.
Most people think of entertainment as thrilling, and hence, programs that have definitive “tricks” tend to perform much better. With any trick, there is something at stake: the performer either lands it or doesn’t. The binary outcome builds suspense, allowing the audience to anticipate a trick and cheer if it’s successful (or if it fails, to encourage the performer to keep going). However, with gymnastics—specifically, aerial silks and hoops—it’s not as showy. It’s meant to be delicate and flowy. At the same time, it takes an incredible amount of discipline and technicality that I don’t think a lot of people recognize.
Gymnastics athletes like Simone Biles and Sunisa Lee gained international recognition for their performances during the Olympic games. But often, it’s not their artistry that’s revered—rather, it’s whether they can land tricks on the vault, beam, or floor, and how many of those they can do. Once again, most people tend to focus on the grander, showier parts, rather than the performance overall.
And that’s what is really frustrating to me. The training that goes into being flexible is rigorous but usually unrecognized. When people are unaware of the work that goes behind this skill, they don’t respect it as much. To be fair, the ones who wish to be entertained want some adrenaline rush. Aerial silks and hoops are difficult to master, but they don’t provide that jolt of excitement. On the other hand, some guy who puts on a wide grin while showing off his muscles satisfies people somehow.
So when the second performance came around, my friends and I put an effort to cheer extra loudly for the gymnasts. I hope that they felt like their work was finally being recognized.
✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧
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