Having watched a couple of Cirque du Soleil clips in the “favorite YouTube” thread, I started thinking about all those rapid, tight, backward handsprings.
Ballet dancers are taught to “spot” when they are doing fast turns to prevent (or abate) dizziness – focus on a spot and glue your eyes to it, so your body rotates until your head has to whip around to find the spot again.
Is there some equivalent for handsprings? Or is dizziness less of a factor because you’re not spinning on axis so much as revolving around a point?
I once studied whirling dervish dance, in which the head rotates along with the body and does not snap around as in ballet. The farthest I got with it was, I was able to keep whirling for 10 minutes (until I got tired), but without getting dizzy at all.
I did this by focusing my attention on my left hand, which was held out at nearly eye level, and was in the direction I was turning towards. My hand slightly preceded my eyes along the circle. This gave me enough of a focus to keep dizziness from setting in.
At the end, as I came to a standstill, the long full skirt wrapping in a spiral around my legs, I felt like the room continued to spin around me for a bit, but without the disorienting feel of dizziness. It never made me feel like I had to stumble sideways or lose my balance the way dizziness does, I easily remained upright and steady on my feet. I’ve been to performances of real Whirling Dervishes from Turkey and they can keep it up for a half hour or so.
I saw Sufi dancers in Cairo, and I’m pretty sure the lead dancer went for close to 45 minutes without stopping.
As to the OP, I got nothin’. Sorry.
I’ve seen helicopter dancers at a Dead concert that would give them a run for their money.