Plot

"Balancing: The Students of the National Circus School" is a five-minute film depicting the graduating performances of the students of the NCS. In "Balancing", the audience will watch the beauty of the performances through a montage of regular and slow motion images of these routines, and will come to understand another perspective through the soundtrack. Various interviews, heard throughout these routines, will demonstrate the extreme effort and dedication required to achieve (what appears to be) effortless beauty. The audience will come to understand the passion, drive, and effort, which underlie the fluidity of a perfectly trained and honed performer, while realizing that they are watching students who have reached the final step in their academic career.—Anonymous

Students at the National Circus School in Montreal are seen performing their routines against a blank background. These performers are either singularly or in combination acrobats, contortionists, balancers, gymnasts, and trapeze artists who use a variety of apparatus from unicycles to hula hoops to metal rings to ropes to perform their routines. The students talk about the emotions and the thought processes behind the routines, especially as they are actually performing. These thoughts are fleeting as most routines feel like they are over before they begin.—Huggo