acrobat

noun

1. An athlete who performs acts requiring skill, agility and coordination, often as part of a circus performance.

verb

1. To practise acrobatics.

   “Tumbling is different from posturing, and means throwing summersets and walking on your hands; and acrobating means the two together […]”

   “They seem to think as clowning and acrobating is a downright paradise, and comes as naturally to anybody as the measles.”

   “Mother was teaching me the tight-rope; I’d learned a bit of acrobating, too.”

   “The others were fairly hulking teenagers in terrible costumes and makeup, who tapped, acrobated, sang, recited, played saxoophones, and did bad magic […]”

2. (figuratively)To move like an acrobat (with agility, balance, long leaps, etc.).

   “We have known […] veteran reporters, so dumbfounded and confounded by the first fire of Ralph, and his grand and lofty acrobating in elocution, that they up, seized their hat and paper, and sloped, horrified at the prospect of an attempt to “take down” Mr. Emerson.”

   “[…] I laughed at the very idea of one of those heavy-pouched, blue-clad fellows catching hold of an agile fellow like I was, who had on more than one occasion acrobated from the engine’s tender back to the rear end of the caboose, by swinging and vaulting from truck to truck, underneath long freight trains running at top speed, with no member of the ever-alert train crew having discovered him.”

   “He acrobated into a shirt, pulled up the pants of his good suit, arching to draw them high […]”

   “Here [in the stage show] was all the paraphernalia I longed for—slit skirts, suntanned thighs, boleros, sequins, saucy looks, legs askew and whole bevies of girls acrobating gracefully while covering their more pertinent parts with fans or gigantic powder puffs.”

   “the blood-red cardinal acrobating about in his holly bush”