And we need to look to ourselves as producers, directors, choreographers, designers, riggers, performers etc and say where are the gaps in my knowledge and how can I go about filling them. Starting from the perspective of the person directly undertaking the risk, the performer, and radiating out to include all the sites visited on the possible pathway to injury. The effort involved in this task will be worth it. The payoff will be increased career length for performers and increased productivity for companies. All that time spent in training will not be wasted with an early career-ending accident and the art form will benefit from the maturity gained.
Danger is sexy now that life has become safer.
It is time for proper respect to be paid to the complexity and difficulty of the repeated successful execution of these skills. That further research is undertaken into the analysis of traditional circus acts for the evolved safety mechanisms they contain, into the types of injuries that are occurring and the conditions in which they occur, and into the scientific analysis of equipment and parameters for safe usage. That this research and it's resulting documents be made available for use by educational bodies and other organisations that work with training and supporting practitioners of circus and physical theatre.