✦circus and sideshow lexicon

✦IRON JAW

A lost art from the 1880 where the performer suspends their entire bodyweight from a leather mouthpiece clamped between their teeth.
Metaphor: Brutal force, hooked, breaking censorship, breaking silence, remove your gag, get your muzzle off, rising into power, a feminist action embodied.

✦AERIAL CHAINS 

Aerial acrobatics performed hanging from industrial chains instead of silks or ropes. Brutal, raw, and dangerous.

​Metaphor: Chained, hooked, addicted, pain, strenght, freedom.

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✦AERIAL ''HOOP'' (AERIAL HANGING KNOT)

Unique to Mania, she created a aerial hoop in a teardrop shape and added ropes.

Metaphor: A noose turned into poetry, the knot between life and death.

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✦AERIAL NET

Acrobatics inside a giant net suspended in the air.

Metaphor: Being caught, stuck, tangled.

✦FIRE EATING 
Fire eating is a sideshow classic. This ancient art is sacrificial to say the least.
Metaphor: Swallowing fear, Power, ''playing with fire''.

✦FLOW ARTS 
Fire dancing and object manipulation (poi, snakes, staffs and chainstaff).

Metaphor: Ritual in motion, ''playing with fire''.
 

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✦THE HUMAN BLOCKHEAD

Hammering a nail (or similar object) into the nasal cavity.

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✦BED OF NAILS
Lying or performing on a bed of sharp nails, sometimes combined with additional weight

✦MENTAL FLOSS
Passing a string through the nasal cavity and pulling it out the mouth.

✦THE HUMAN BILLBOARD

Piercing or stapling objects into the skin, turning the body into a literal billboard.
 

✦GLASSWALKING

Walking on broken glass
Metaphor ; Glasswalking is a ritual of transformation ; crossing your own pain without being cut by it again. Trusting your balance amid chaos, and finding beauty in what was once broken