Addressing intersections of performances, practices, and practitioners of circus aerial and BDSM, I investigate how “play” manifests in both activities. Circus aerial and kink both involve forms of play that experiment with what is possible, tenable, and worthwhile for bodies to do under restrictive and painful conditions. Both practices are both pleasurable and serious, seeking transcendent, less “controlled” experiences, while maintaining the level of control necessary in forms of play involving real risk. Aerialists select their performance apparatuses not just aesthetically, but for the planes of intensity that playing on and with them enables them to traverse in experimentation and performance, mirroring the complex factors determining an individual’s preferred forms of kink play. Combining performance analysis, interviews with kink-involved circus aerial performers, and my own experience as an aerialist and a kink practitioner, in conversation with theories of play and of sexuality, I explore how intersections of pain, pleasure, and play in BDSM and aerial practice inform each other on embodied and aesthetic registers. I argue that, as an assemblage of aerialist and apparatus, the performer engages in a Deleuzian act of becoming, evoking a Body without Organs that, in its play of intensities, is more than incidentally masochistic.

在表演，实践以及马戏团和BDSM表演者的交汇处，我研究了“娱乐”在两种活动中的表现方式。马戏团的空中和扭结都涉及游戏形式，这些游戏尝试了身体在受限和痛苦的条件下可能，持久且值得做的事情。两种做法都是愉快且严肃的，寻求超越的，较少的“受控”经验，同时保持涉及真实风险的游戏形式所必需的控制水平。空中飞人不仅要从美学上选择他们的表演设备，还要选择在其上和与他们一起玩耍时所经过的强度平面，从而使他们能够在实验和表演中来回走动，从而反映出决定个人偏爱打折游戏的复杂因素。结合性能分析，采访涉及扭结的马戏团空中表演者，以及我自己作为空中飞人和扭结练习者的经验，在与游戏和性理论进行对话的过程中，我探索了BDSM和空中练习中疼痛，愉悦和游戏的交集如何相互交流在具体的和美学的记录上。我认为，作为空中飞人和装置的组合，表演者参与了德洛伊兹式的行为，唤起了一个没有器官的身体，从强度上讲，它不仅仅是偶然的受虐狂。