Arcus The 360 Oversplit

Arcus getting warmed up for his final dance at one of the annual festivals. This dance is rarely performed as it takes so much flexibility that it's very hard to find a sufficient dancer, that's why this dance is always a very special event with a lot of people gathering to watch it.

Not the whole dance is based on contortions but there's a certain moment which is the most difficult where the dancer slides in a split on the floor and then two assistants start lifting his feet higher and higher, stretching his legs until his feet touch each other above his head. Because it's so difficult it wasn't performed for several years already, so everyone was amazed when this new slave Arcus suddenly became a candidate for this dance.

Extreme stretching wasn't Arcus' own passion, but after he was enslaved it was decided to make him a dancing contortionist, it was a rather random decision because the King simply saw a dream about a bendy dancer who looked very much like Arcus, but after Arcus' training started it was discovered that he was literally born to become a contortionist.

His joints were always so pliant and inviting to try and push a little further that his trainer was always too tempted to go deeper and he wouldn't let Arcus go until he was done with him. Obviously Arcus was the best trainee he had in years, so sometimes they worked for 3 or 4 hours straight. For the first couple of weeks Arcus cried a lot but after his body adapted to this new life style he started feeling more and more light and healthy, he learned a lot of bends that only few other dancers could do and was the obvious candidate for the main annual dance.

Even though Arcus was so gifted it was still a lot of hard work, he had to get up in the early morning and already start working on his splits, then the main warming up began with his trainer and lasted for almost 3 hours, holding a deeper and deeper stretch for 5 minutes at a time as shown in the picture, until both feet could fully step on the ground.