Chair Balancing is a discipline in which balancing artists use a significant
number of stacked chairs, upon which they perform balancing moves at the top of the
pile or stack. The chairs may be balanced on other objects and/or on just one or
two of the legs. And, the chairs used in balance have notches cut out or extra
pieces of material added to allow them to be stacked at otherwise unstable angles.
Cirque du Soleil takes the basic function and raises it to an art form!
One by one, the chairs are raised slowly and placed ever so gently on top of
each other to form a pyramid. Like a larger- than-life house of cards, the structure
is so delicate, so fragile that everyone holds their breath in silence, lest the
slightest gust of wind cause it to topple to the ground. Erected in the purest
Chinese tradition, the pyramid is so tall that anyone who climbs to the top looks
as small as a child from the ground. Suddenly, the acrobats do a flip and balance
themselves upside down on their column of chairs! Wow!
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