This pioneering study is one of the major publications in the increasingly popular and largely undocumented area of circus studies.

Through photographs and illustrations, Peta Tait presents an extraordinary survey of 140 years of trapeze acts and the socially changing ideas of muscular action in relation to our understanding of gender and sexuality. She questions how spectators see and enjoy aerial actions, and what cultural identities are presented by bodies in fast, physical aerial movement.

Adeptly locating aerial performance within the wider cultural...