Safety
In the early years of young Mr. Leotard's performances, the flying trapeze did not have the safety net as is typically seen today. He would perform over a series of mattresses on a raised runway to give the audience a better view of his tricks or "passes."
Most modern flyers start out wearing a safety harness, while a trainer on the ground controls the lines and will pull them if the flyer is in a dangerous situation. Pulling on the lines will suspend the flyer in the air, and letting go of the lines slowly will bring the flyer to the ground safely. Once a flyer has mastered a particular trick, they will take off the safety harness. Every safe flying trapeze rig will always have a large net underneath the rig. Many flyers in the circus do not start out using safety belts. Those flyers who are not wearing safety harnesses learn how to fall safely into the net in case they miss a catch or unexpectedly fall off the bar or off the catcher.
Several risky flying trapeze acts have been performed without safety nets in earlier circus days, but it would be rare to find this kind of act today, as most flying trapeze acts are performed between 20 and 40 feet above the ground.
Read more about this topic: Flying Trapeze
Famous quotes containing the word safety:
“Perhaps in a book review it is not out of place to note that the safety of the state depends on cultivating the imagination.”
—Stephen Vizinczey (b. 1933)
“A lover is never a completely self-reliant person viewing the world through his own eyes, but a hostage to a certain delusion. He becomes a perjurer, all his thoughts and emotions being directed with reference, not to an accurate and just appraisal of the real world but rather to the safety and exaltation of his loved one, and the madness with which he pursues her, transmogrifying his attention, blinds him like a victim.”
—Alexander Theroux (b. 1940)
“Can we not teach children, even as we protect them from victimization, that for them to become victimizers constitutes the greatest peril of all, specifically the sacrifice—physical or psychological—of the well-being of other people? And that destroying the life or safety of other people, through teasing, bullying, hitting or otherwise, “putting them down,” is as destructive to themselves as to their victims.”
—Lewis P. Lipsitt (20th century)