International Terminology of Acrobatic Gymnastics

I. Acrobatics

• Acro, short for Acrobatic Gymnastics
• Acrobatics describes movement that is especially elegant and virtuous, including high degrees of balance, dynamics, flexibility, strength and coordination as well as a performance art of displaying these acrobatic moves in the context of shows or competitions in Acrobatic Gymnastics. A person that practices and/or performs Acrobatics and/or competes in Acrobatic Gymnastics in particular and/or performs acrobatics professionally, is called an “Acrobat”.
  • Etymology: “Acrobat” comes from greek akrobatos, a compound of akros and batēs. Akros means one who is at the top, at a peak, in great height, from the indogermanic root *ak-, which stands for “being sharp”, “raising up” or “piercing/urging through”. Batēs means “one who walks” or “strides” in some way. Literally, an acrobat is someone who walks high, walks on the tip (including on tip toes), such as a “ropewalker” (in German, rope-walkers are called Seiltänzer, meaning “rope-dancers”). Based on the etymology, in a metaphorical sense an acrobat can be described as someone who strides up, striving for greater height and to pierce through towards a higher point, which fits well both to the balance in acrobatics (where acrobats are always striving for maximum extension, the base partner holding the top partner as high as he can, the top stretching her body upwards to the sky from her hand to her pointed toes) as well as to dynamics (where the acrobats literally fly after being thrown and try to fly higher). It also fits indirectly in the sense of the constant striving for higher level skills.
• Acrobatic Disciplines: Acrobatics in a general sense (not limited to the codified gymnastic form) covers many different disciplines. Defined as “acrobatic” are all the various disciplines that are especially virtuous in nature, display extraordinary physical control combined with either unusual strength and/or flexibility and/or balance and/or coordination. / There are many acrobatic disciplines which contain external apparata or external objects. Rope-Walkers require a rope, Aerialists require some kind of apparatus rigged to the ceiling (e.g. Straps, Silks, Hoop, Trapeze, Chinese Pole etc.), others require Apparata on the floor (e.g. a teetherboard), Handbalancers most often use Canes to balance on, Equilibrists balance external things and the entire area of “Object Manipulation” obviously requires objects (such as in juggling). Skateboarding is an extraordinary example for an acrobatic discipline in which the acrobat works quasi with both an Apparatus and manipulates an Object at the same time. But there are a few acrobatic disciplines that do not need any external object nor apparatus. It is them we focus on in this project, since Acrobatic Gymnastics as a sport is a mixture of these disciplines that do not require anything but the body of an acrobat working individually and the bodies of two or more acrobats when working together.
  • Floor Acro consists of acrobatic motions that are performed individually on the floor with nothing but ones body; the movement can be choreographed or improvised or be a mixture of both. / There are also specific movements in Artistic Gymnastics that are assigned the attribute of being “acrobatic”. / Floor Acro contains some of these “official” gymnastic acrobatic moves, but also incorporates moves from diverse dance styles or martial arts; it just holds everything that is acrobatic in nature and can be done alone on the floor. / Exceptional floor acrobats link their elements fluidly together like dancers, in often long and complex sequences that are very different than the rather “rigid” Artistic Gymnastic floor routines. While in Artistic Gymnastics the acrobatic moves are almost always performed in straight “lines”, Floor Acrobats may as well perform their acrobatics in Curves, in Circles, in Spirals or any other way.
  • Handbalancing consists of balancing on ones hands, on two hands or one, performing different handstand shapes and forms in an artistic manner, improvised or choreographed. While it is often performed on Canes on stage it does not require any equipment and can as well be practiced and performed on the floor.
  • Contortion focuses on the display of extreme degrees of flexibility, often shown by genetically gifted girls or women and often combined with handbalancing. In German Contortionists have been generally described as “Schlangenmenschen” (snake humans) due to their seemingly unlimited ability to bend their bodies.
  • Hand to Hand is a particular category of partner acrobatics without any apparatus and without any objects, where the acrobats (at least two) perform acrobatic feats with each other on the floor. Hand to Hand is the primary discipline in Acrobatic Gymnastics and shown in Circus Acts, but for some reason it seems to be not as widely known and not as frequently performed on stage as other acrobatic disciplines.

• Acrobatic History: The origins of acrobatics can be traced back to ancient Egypt, Greece and many other fallen cultures of the past. In fact, while almost known the least and probably being the least popular, Acrobatic Gymnastics is the oldest of all gymnastic sports. […] Other than this cultural background, there are also practical applications of Acrobatics that may have contributed to its development. Human Pyramids may have been build first for simple practical reasons: When trying to climb up a tree with an unreachable branch, humans just climbed on each other to reach higher and get up to the fruit. A similar anecdote: Once a ball has landed on a low roof outside the hall. The boys were asking us for help and wanted to know if we have a ladder. We told them: We do not need a ladder for this. We went out together, a girl stood on top of me and reached for the ball easily. The boys could have taken the ball themselves would they have known about and practiced this simple skill. This is the functional essence of Acrobatics. In the same way we know that in ancient Greece there were some sort of special forces in the army that have been trained to climb on top of each other in order to overcome walls of their enemies. Human pyramids are also performed to this day in diverse cultures in celebrative contexts. Acrobats performed on shows and festivals in all kinds of cultures and times, in ancient Greece and China as well as in medieval Europe, where already, just as today, acrobats and other performance artists, musicians etc. travelled from city to city to perform - the roots of the Circus. And still today most people (at least in Germany) associates Acrobats mostly with the Circus and less so with a particular sport. Less known and studied may be the roots of Acrobatics in childhood, which I therefore want to put some focus on. There may be valuable studies to be made in regard to children’s development both in context of psychology as well as physiology and motor-control.

• Acrobatics as Exploration: Acrobatics can be thought of as a continuation of childish exploration (into adulthood). It is an advanced form of exploration of pure human movement capabilities (“pure” in the sense of purely focused on the human body without any external apparatus or object). Acrobatics is rooted in childs play, it is childs play getting serious. Children explore their bodies and the capabilities of their bodies, to find out what their bodies can do (it may be surprising, but it is true, that a small percentage of toddlers learn completely on their own to push themselves up into a bridge from a lying position before they even learn to crawl). There is a natural joy involved in the exploration of movement, which is crucial for children to have in order to learn all the once necessary (and today at least useful) and very complex human movement skills. Both “pure” human movement skills as well as “extended” ones via tools; both are critical for survival and at the roots of every human culture. Acrobatics evolves from the childish love for movement, the joy of adults about and with the child, the childs desire to experience more of this joy by more and greater movement and mastery of their bodies, the adults willingness to help them thereby and their own playfulness to participate in their play by offering their strength advantage and the lightness of the child to lift, hold, swing and throw it. What acrobats are doing is to proceed from the simplest movements learned as a child towards ever more complex movements by simply continueing to explore the movement capabilities of the human body - it is thus not without a reason that in eastern Europe, where Acrobatic Gymnastics originated, it has been described as the “foundation” of all sports. From the exploration of movement capabilities of their own body, children proceed to explore what their bodies can do with other things, with tools etc. (and this playful exploration of handling tools/objects leads to craft of all sorts as well as to advanced juggling or equilibristic). Floor acrobatics is the continuation of the exploration of the capabilities of the body without any tools, while partner acrobatics is an extension of said childish exploration by including the bodies of others into the exploration of possibilities, by moving in cooperation. In the joy about and with the child, a father, feeling blessed, may lift his child up into the sky, sharing its joy and excitement. He may throw it up and catch it again, he may swing it around, the child wanting him to do it again and again… It is the joy and drill involved in a movement that it cannot perform on its own, as it can only be performed together. As well many mothers, while playing with their child, hold it on their feet, playing “flying”, a fundamental beginner element in Acro. All of this is acrobatics. Acrobatic Gymnastics is the refinement of this natural, playful practice and the result of following through with the exploration of human movement capabilities to the utmost extreme, codified into a complex art and a competitive sport system and educational training system for the preservation and progress of the art. Higher level acrobatics is born in and evolving from these very roots in childhood. And due to these very roots it shouldn’t be surprising that Acrobatics has always been a sports performed by partners with smaller or larger age differences, just as fathers with their daughters (not an unusual partnership in the Circus).

• Acrobatics as an inter-generational art: The acrobatic culture (from children playing with their parents and friends, over circus families, to modern acrobatic gymnastics) has always been a culture of inter-generational cooperation, which is a very specific characteristic of the art. In all kinds of other movement arts and sports, adults are teaching children, but they usually will not perform or compete together. In Acrobatics children aren’t isolated from the youth or adults as is the case in many other areas of modern life. In Acro it is normal and physically necessary that older teenagers work with younger children and adults work with teenagers. It is also by simple physics that acrobatics as a sport has been and will always be dominated by children or teenagers as upper partners. Also in the senior level of the sports with grown-up athletes of 15 or 16+, the sport will always be dominated by those teenagers as upper partners with child-like proportions or those adults with early-teen like proportions. This obviously does not exclude the possibility of rare exceptions, where a partnership with disadvantages in height and/or weight manages to overcome their opponents in difficulty with more advantages; but these cases will remain exceptions. / While it is obvious that for reasons of fairness these differences have to (and at least partially are) taken into account in context of sports/competition, it isn’t justified to make fun of or belittle such partnerships neither in competitive performance (where they already receive a lot of deduction for it, which may be fair in some cases and very unfair in other cases, because weight difference is more important but isn’t taken into account) nor in non-competitive performance (as for instance in traditional Circus families, where a father may perform with his young daughter). It is a simple fact, that without children acrobatics wouldn’t be practiced much, wouldn’t have developed into what it is today. Some use to belittle it as “throwing of children” (“Kinderwerfen”), but this very throwing of children is most likely at the very roots of most high level acrobatic elements and has been done/invented by very small children with adults first before being performed by older athletes with less ideal weight/strength-ratio. Adult acrobats basically continue to act out and to preserve (or in many cases re-discover) this “playfulness” of childhood that is inherent in Acro.

• Acrobatics vs. Dance: Many of the things we wrote about Acrobatics above could as well be said about Dance. What is the difference between balletic and acrobatic movement? Like acrobats, dancers continue to evolve their movement repertoire in exceptionally complex ways. Most people stop doing so past a specific point in their childhood or youth, when having learned the most basic movements needed for everyday life; after that their movement starts to slowly degrade. Many children nowadays acquire more movement capabilities than strictly needed in modern society, such as climbing, swimming or jumping. But since these skills are no longer necessary for them, fewer children master these basic skills and more and more people loose these skills early. What once has been crucial to master has now become optional or “nice to have”, only done in the context of “recreational activity”. Thus, Acrobats as well as Dancers continue their exploration of the movement capabilities of their bodies way past the necessary skill set. I would say that there is no fundamental difference between a dancer and a floor acrobat; the difference lies in specific qualities and the focus or “direction” of their movement. Partner acrobats as they practice in Acrobatic Gymnastics add to their individual movement the additional realm of cooperation between two or more human bodies, but in “higher”, more difficult and more “vertical”, essentially “playful” ways of movement complexity, compared to what is done in different forms of dancing with a partner. While contemporary or ballet develop human movement between partners into the direction of the greatest elegance, softness, emotional expression and gentle intimacy, overcoming shyness and presenting themselves on stage in all their vulnerability, evoking diverse emotions, acrobatics develops human movement between partners into the direction of the greatest virtuous velocity, breathtaking and surprising stunts, unusual displays of strength, hardship and trust, overcoming fear, including playing with fear and especially with “wonder”, “catching” the audience. In the end, both Dance and Acrobatics are performance Arts and have many things in common; any difference that may exist dissolves in interdisciplinary disciplines like Acro Dance or Acrobatic Gymnastics, where dance is a crucial aspect of the performance. But one way to describe the difference may be that dancers develop their skills in a more lateral way and acrobats in a more vertical way. Dancers focus more on the subleties of expression, the elegance and variety of their movement, while acrobats focus more on the precision, difficulty and technical execution of their movement. But the border between Acro and Dance, if there ever was any, is fluid.

Acrobatic Gymnastics

• Acrobatic Gymnastics is one of the official gymnastic sports of the FIG (Federation Internationale de Gymnastique), in which the above mentioned disciplines that do not require apparata nor objects were codified in form of three major categories: Duo (2), Trio (3) and Quartett (4), with five possible formations: Mixed Pair (MxP or Mx2), Womens Pair (WP or W2), Mens Pair (MP or M2), Womens Group (WG or W3) and Mens Group (MG or M4). In the past there were mixed groups too, but no more. In these pairs and groups the partner perform acrobatic partner elements in Hand to Hand. There are other sports like “Cheerleading” that also involve the discipline of Hand to Hand to some degree, but objectively on a much lower technical level than in Acro. In Acrobatic Gymnastics hand to hand is performed on the highest levels. The pairs or groups compete only against other pairs and groups of the same category (e.g. Mixed Pairs only compete against other Mixed Pairs) in three different routines: Balance, Dynamic and Combined. But it also contains high level handbalancing (on the partner) as well as contortion and floor acrobatics to some degree. On competitions the same spring floor of 12x12m is used as in Artistic Gymnastics, primarily for safety reasons by landing from dynamic elements.

• Acrobatic Gymnastics History: [ToDo] / Apparata: It was also not always the case that Acro is done without Apparatus. Once, in the early years of the sports, Trapez was competed. Canes on a Podest were also a discipline on its own, which has since been discontinued on the international level, but is still possible to compete on regional competitions, primarily as a substitution and a way to keep practicing and competing for those who are momentarily without a partner. Some federations started to organise competitions on “Blocks” (small canes) since they are widely used in training for the preparation of the tops anyway and are much easier and cheaper to get and to transport than the large Podests of the past.
  • From Artistic Strength Sport to Sportacrobatics: ToDo
  • From Sportacrobatics to Acrobatic Gymnastics: ToDo
• Element: An element is the official term for the acrobatic skill that is performed either in a partnership or individually by the acrobat(s). Thus elements are divided into two categories: “Partner Elements” and “Individual Elements”. They are also sometimes described as tricks or stunts, especially outside of gymnastics.
  • Motions and Links: Elements can either be performed on their own in seperation or be part of a Sequence. Balance elements can be seemlessly connected or “sequenced” via Motions. Dynamic elements can be seemlessly connected or sequenced via Links.
  • Partner Elements are those elements that are performed with a partner (in pairs) or partners (in groups). They are what acrobatic routines are designed around, they are what is judged primarily, what gives the most points and what the sport is essentially made of (in comparison to individual elements, which are less important). Partner Elements are divided into the two categories of “Balance” and “Dynamic”. Every element falls in one of these two categories, but can also be combined. For instance a balance position can become the starting or landing position for a dynamic element.
  • Individual Elements are those elements that are performed individually on the floor. They are less important than partner elements, give less value and in order to put more focus on the partner elements they have become optional in the senior level, while remaining mandatory in the age groups for reasons of skill development. Since this change in the rules many senior partnerships do not perform any individual elements anymore. Individual elements are divided into four categories: (1) Agility, (2) Static, (3) Flexibility and (4) Tumbling, for more details see Individual Elements.
• Dance, ToDo
• Choreography, short Choreo, (ToDo) / The choreography connects acrobatic elements with dance. Choreos are often divided into smaller “passages” or “sequences”, often consisting of a specific choreo portion and an element or a sequence of elements.
• Artistry, ToDo
• Execution, ToDo
• Technique, ToDo
• Sequence, ToDo
• Partner(s)
  • Base
  • Top
  • Middle
• Fomation
• Pair
• Group
• Team
• Duo
• Trio
• Quartet
• Disciplines of Acrobatic Gymnastics
  • Mixed Pair
  • Womens Pair
  • Mens Pair
  • Womens Group
  • Mens Group
• Routine
• Composition

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