From a wobbling first handstand to a spinning wheel of death — here are 35 circus disciplines, side by side. See how fast each one is to learn, what it does to your body, how long a career on it lasts, and what it pays.
Pick a discipline from the list to see what it is, its stats, and a photo of that exact act. Use the ↑ / ↓ arrow keys to move between them.
Aerial silks — a solid choice, with a catch. It scores where it matters: wow 9/10, pay 7/10, and it anchors the corporate aerial booking market. But it's slow (~24 months to a real act), carries real acute risk (7/10) and shoulder/wrist wear (7/10), and it needs a rated rigging point with height — so it's venue-dependent. Great if you have reliable rig access and two-plus years to invest.
Best act that needs no rig — Cyr wheel. Same wow as silks (9/10) but the highest pay score in the whole set (8/10), faster to learn (~18 months), lower risk (5/10) and lower wear (5/10). It packs into a few rings you can fly with — no rigging, no height, no crew. That portability is exactly why it's so bookable.
No-rig, high-impact ranking:
Bottom line: rig + patience → silks pays off in spectacle. Want maximum impact without depending on a venue → Cyr wheel wins.
Click any column header to sort. All 1–10 scores; "Time to act" = realistic months of consistent training to a stage-ready 3-minute number for a reasonably athletic adult.
Click a header to sort. Longevity = rough years you can keep performing it on stage. Portability = how easily you tour it (10 = packs in a bag & flies anywhere). Saturation = how crowded the market is (high = lots of performers already do it, harder to stand out).
The 1–10 scores, plus the longevity, portability and saturation figures, are informed estimates — not measured data. No study rates circus disciplines on a scale like this, so each number is a synthesis of three things: published circus-medicine research (for risk and long-term body wear), the live performer and corporate booking market (for pay and audience wow), and widely cited training-time guides (for learning time and time-to-stage). They're a relative map for comparison, not hard facts, so treat anything that clashes with your own experience as the better source — and if you disagree with any of these stats, I'm always open to a discussion (leave a comment below).
Key sources behind the estimates:
Discipline reference photos are loaded from Wikimedia (Wikipedia / Wikimedia Commons) or local images in this folder.