A welcome addition to the rich paradigm of circus research to which Dr. Franziska Trapp had already significantly contributed through organizing ground-breaking conferences on Zirkuswissenschaft in which her scholarly leadership achieved a powerful synergy, bringing together academic researchers and circus artists. In this innovative book, based on hand-on research and precise analyses, she explores, with theoretical and methodological virtuosity, the artistic creativity of contemporary acrobatic performances emancipated from the historical constraints of the traditional circus. It is a first and highly successful attempt to engage the challenging complexity of the contemporary acrobatic circus and to elaborate a persuasive semiotics and poetics of this new, emergent genre.