July 10, 2024 / by Mark / In philosophy

Why excellence is not extraordinary

Excellence in performance is not extraordinary.

Outstanding performance is actually a combination of many small skills or activities, whether we mean performance as in a beautiful act on stage, or as in how well how well we’re executing our actions acrobatically or athletically.

Each small skill is learned, or discovered by chance, and has been practiced until it’s a habit. They are then are combined to form a complete whole.

There is nothing exceptional or superhuman in any one of those actions; the only important thing is that they are done consistently and correctly.

In combination, they produce excellence.

When a circus artist develops their mobility, it improves their acrobatic ability as well as their performative lines and makes them resilient to injury.

Add to that strength conditioning focused on your needs, training in a movement practice such as dance, and training in act creation, and you get a ‘skills stack’ which synergistically progresses you towards excellence.

A firm foundation of physical mobility, strength training, nutrition, recovery and sustainable training practice allows you to build on your skills stack with a new layer of circus technique training, then a layer of movement practice, then act creation.

Even considerations of costume make a difference to the end movements.

Each experience has its own intrinsic value, and is compounded by the different aspects of your whole skills stack. Hence learning different circus arts also feeds into your overall progression.

Each of these elements may seem small in itself, but they allow each performer to train and move better with less stress on their body and a higher chance of longevity in their career.

Learning and consistently practising all these skills together is what develops excellence in performance.

Training in areas beyond your preferred circus discipline builds a wider ability – just as rugby players train much more than running in a field with a ball, and swimmers train outside the pool.

Working on flexibility, conditioning and movement practices like dance acro will add to your capability. Professional courses include these as a base for a reason – they enable students to perform better in their chosen skills, whether it is aerial or ground-based acrobatics.

The little things really do count!

Photo credit: Max Crawford