The crowd keeps on cheering and clapping for the tamer stealing an extra bow as lions and tigers exit one by one. Without missing a beat, stagehands immediately start tearing down and removing the cage panels surrounding the ring. The speed and agility with which they remove, nearly juggling bars away, might impress some, but the tamer’s wife has taken center stage to climb on a rope. That is how vertical rope was seen for many years: as a filler act.

Long before hip key and windmill became terms as common as multiplex or flash, very few cared about a rope hanging from the grid. Traditional circuses used it to reach a trapeze, for a quick Spanish web spin, or during those teardowns. In the same way, stagehands remove sawdust from felines’ pedestals, the contemporary circus movement dusted off the long hanging thread, turned it into a full artistic presentation, and made it a popular discipline in circus schools. Severing ties with tamers’ wives and tradition, creative minds found new methods of storytelling by wrapping up and dropping down in ways that other aerial apparatus did not allow. Some researched the perfect way to get from the very top to an inch off the ground while others worked on finding the most elaborate and intricate wrap in which audiences would get lost without getting lost themselves! “You cannot get lost on the rope. You must always kno...