Kayleigh Greig highlights the top names in contortion and calisthenics to inspire your inner acrobat
As a teenager, I once tried out aerial silks. The phase was brief, given there was no proper age group for me – I was either lumped in with the twelve-year-olds or the forty-year-olds – but it taught me to appreciate the incredible strength and grace of masters of the art (and just how much flexibility I’d lost since quitting gymnastics in year three).
Though I left the silks behind, my desire to push my body to new extremes was renewed with a vigour, and I quickly took up at-home contortion… or tried to, anyway. I progressed about as far as getting my front splits back, but my greater achievement was finding some amazing talents online to keep me inspired. So, if you want to know about some of the most spectacular circus-like talents, read on.
The first: Sofie Dossi. She competed in America’s Got Talent (in 2016, aged 14), AGT: The Champions (in 2019, aged 17) and AGT: Fantasy League (in 2024, aged 22) and received the golden buzzer for both the former and the latter. Her most recent act? Picture a girl balanced on her hands, back folded in half, feet dangling over her face, jumping from handhold to handhold on top of a giant, spinning wheel. Yuh. And she can shoot a bow and arrow with her feet – in a handstand, of course. If you have any interest in contortion, or you simply want to watch her spin while hanging by her neck on a flaming hoop, I highly recommend you check out her YouTube channel @sofiedossi.
Of course, what’s better than one contortionist? Two! The Rybka twins are not only disconcertingly identical, but they are able to perform in-sync tricks in acro, dance and contortion of which no human should be capable. Even better? They’re Aussie (although, they also appeared on America’s Got Talent)! Sam and Teagan have fun, upbeat attitudes, creating plenty of tutorials so you can progress to their level (with a lot of dedication and a good dose of natural talent).
Finally, Summer, with her channel @Summerfunfitness, shows off incredible strength in calisthenics. If you’ve never heard of that before, it basically involves body-weight exercises; on the lower end of the scale, this could be push-ups or sit ups, but professionals like Summer are capable of muscle-ups (lifting yourself from dead-hang up to having the bar at your hips), handstand push-ups and V-sit holds. Her latest venture is working on the iron cross: holding on to hanging rings on either side while keeping her arms perfectly horizontal and supporting her entire bodyweight.
I know I’ll likely never be capable of half the things these amazing women can do (and there are plenty more ridiculously skilled people of all sorts that I haven’t even mentioned), but just knowing they exist and that humanity was able to achieve this gives me hope that I can do anything weird, wonderful and wacky that I set my mind to.
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